Immunity
by Cipher44
Summary: Crossover with The Stand. COMPLETE. There's no turning back now ...
1. Chapter 1 June 22 Day 1

**Title**: Immunity (title will definitely change)****

**Author**: Cipher44

**Revision: **3/17/03

**Primary Email**: ninfan45@hotmail.com

**Type: **Third Watch/The Stand crossover****

**Rating**: R. Violence, profanity, mature themes.

**Summary**: c/o with "The Stand" WIP. A Bosco character study mainly. Chapter 1: Bosco and Cruz have a slight disagreement ...

**Spoilers:** You should be up to date on Third Watch's storyline; this story picks up right after the episode where Cruz is almost strangled in the alley, though you'll have to allow for the fact that we've skipped ahead to summer. I don't think it's necessary to have read the Stand, but needless to say, it would help; there are a TON of small references to the book here. 

  
  


******Disclaimer**: The Third Watch characters ain't mine. They belong to somebody else. Don't know if you knew that or not, but just thought I'd say it anyway. Likewise, any characters mentioned from the Stand belong to Stephen King.

  
  


**__****_Notes_**

  
  


I love crossovers, particularly unlikely ones, and this idea occurred to me as I watched some of the more recent episodes of TW. Also, I remember a few years ago I had a nice, geeky discussion with a friend over what the characters from our favorite shows might do in the aftermath of the plague ... 

  
  


It's mainly a study of Bosco, his relationships to his each of his partners (Faith Yokas and the other one, you know, the _evil_ one; Cruz) and what really drives him ...

  
  


Point of interest: What the hell is Sergeant Cruz' first name? Does she even have one? I seem to remember her junkie sister calling her "Rita," but I could be wrong ...

* * *

  
  
  
  
  
  


**__****Immunity __**

(tentative title)**__**

  
  
  
  


It's the end of the world as we know it

And I feel fine

  


_- R.E.M_

  
  
  
  


**Chapter 1**

June 22

Day 1

  
  


People come and go. Nothing lasts forever. You make friends and then you move on and make new. It happens. Sometimes you don't necessarily want it to, but it happens. 

On some level Maurice Boscorelli understood that these were all just second-rate cliches. He would be the first to admit he was no genius, but that hardly mattered; his newfound philosophical streak pleased him with the simplicity of its truth. He was still young, still finding his place in the world, and it hardly needed to be said that he didn't plan on being a patrol officer for the rest of his career. Never had. 

At first he thought the next step would be ESU, the Emergency Services Unit. The shamelessly testosterone-charged atmosphere had appealed to him greatly, at least until he saw what looking down the scope of a sniper rifle did to Glen Hobart. Being a sniper, being the man who has to shoot from the shadows, to take a man's head off without him ever seeing your face. Had such a slimy, cowardly job actually _appealed_ to him, and such a short time ago?

When Hobart deliberately forced another sniper to shoot him, Bosco had been quite sure that Glen had died absolutely _relishing_ the irony of it; suicide not only by cop, but by one of his own breed. No doubt in the hope that someday, _that_ sniper might find himself in exactly in the same twisted, hopeless place Glen had met his end. The cycle continues.

For Maurice Boscorelli, the ESU idea had evaporated. 

Then he'd discovered Anti-Crime, the close-knit plainclothes unit which had the dubious honor of working some of the worst neighborhoods in New York. Mostly focused on the drug problem, which was, of course, the root of most of the others. He'd discovered that working Anti-Crime was so much more liberating than being a beat cop, that free of the uniform you at least _felt_ like you were just slightly more in control. You could get away with bending the rules, and quite often you had no choice. You had to think street. You had to meet the enemy on his own terms. Bosco loved it.

Of course, some of it was Cruz. 

Okay. A _lot_ of it was Cruz. 

Bosco looked over at the woman who slouched in the driver's seat of their unmarked Crown Victoria. Long, sleek, bronze-skinned Sergeant Cruz. Cruz with her dark beauty, the sharp, angular and proudly _cruel_ features that seemed to be set in a permanent scowl. Cruz with her full breasts, long legs, and superb ass. _Magnificent_ ass, Bosco amended with a smile. Cruz who was always _Cruz_ or _Sergeant Cruz_, one of those people to whom using a first name just seemed somehow wrong, no matter how well you knew her. 

No matter how many times you'd slept with her. 

Just the one time, so far. If he played his cards right, maybe again. Cruz seemed to want him to believe it had been a one-night stand, something Bosco figured was because Cruz thought he'd only come over to her apartment that night to get laid. The ironic truth was that he had _not_; he had truly wanted to comfort her after the death of her sister. Now, if it were anyone else ... then _yes_, he'd have been there to score. But not Cruz; with her it somehow never crossed his mind. He'd figured Cruz would play it too tough to allow such a thing to happen, and it had been a complete surprise when she'd literally jumped him on the spot. 

The surprise had worn off fast; if Maurice Boscorelli was nothing else, he was quick on the recovery. And contrary to what even he himself would have thought, he had still respected Cruz in the morning. Bosco found that for perhaps the first time in his life he could see a woman he might really and truly be able to connect with. 

Professionally, he believed he already had.

Which wasn't to say he didn't respect Faith Yokas; he did. He and Faith had been partners for _years_. They'd _met_ at the Academy, and on the first day, no less. But as he compared Faith to Cruz - something which was as uncomfortable as it was inevitable - he was beginning to see that Faith just simply did not understand him. 

In fact, unwilling as he may be to admit it, he realized that Faith may _never_ have truly understood him. Faith thought of him as one of her kids. He'd long suspected that; he was getting more and more sure it was true. Old Bosco, headstrong and reckless and obnoxious. Better keep his ass on a leash. 

Working with Cruz was something else altogether. Cruz was tough, she was ruthless, and she did not always follow the book. Well, so what? Such was life with Anti-Crime. He knew little about Cruz or her upbringing, but it was obvious she had come up from the streets, that she may well have been raised in one of the same shithole neighborhoods she now worked in. In fact, if you wanted to sound like a recruitment poster, you could say that Cruz herself embodied the spirit of the Anti-Crime unit.

Faith had a problem with that, it seemed. Faith had problems with a lot of what Bosco said and did, and she was rarely shy about making it known, but he suspected that this friction over Cruz might just be the last straw. What was it Faith had said? _She's no good, Bosco_. Something like that.

Bosco disagreed. When some punk jagoff orders a hit on a _twelve-year-old kid,_ for Christ's sake, you don't sit around moaning and pissing about the finer points of ethics. You nail the son of a bitch, even if it means falsifying a dying declaration. And if you need to strong-arm some asshole, Cruz had the perfect leverage; a small packet of crack cocaine. Don't want to cooperate with the police and be a good little citizen? Sure. Whoops! What _have_ we here? 

Faith didn't know about _that_ little trick, and for that Bosco was thankful. 

Yes sir, it just might be time for some small adjustments to his career path. Adjustments that may mean leaving Faith behind. 

People come and go. You meet new friends. Life goes on. All that jazz. 

Next to him, Cruz coughed, hawked juicily, and spat a large wad of green snot out the car's window. 

Okay, so Cruz was hot. And she was a _killer_ in bed. But damn, she could quite often be _most_ unladylike. 

Tonight she was unusually quiet. Her manner was brusque to begin with - almost to the point of rudeness, in many cases - but she'd said absolutely nothing all evening. Still thinking over the "one-night stand," maybe.

He flipped on the radio just for something to fill the void, twisting the knob just a bit too far. Pop-rock immediately issued from every speaker in the car at a bowel-churning volume, and Cruz jumped in her seat. It was jazzy stuff, vacuous and unoriginal, the kind of one-hit-wonder crap that was good for nothing but setting the mood when you were trying to get laid. A singer who sounded constipated was asking his baby if she could dig her man. 

Bosco was aware of Cruz looking at him. _Scowling _at him. "_What_ are you doing, Boscorelli?"

Bosco winced and turned the volume down. Like Faith, Cruz had this funny way of making him feel about eight years old, but _unlike_ Faith there was a gleefully perverted part of him that got off on it. "Sorry. Just thought we could use some music."

Cruz smiled. Or, at least, offered the kind of half-smirk that was as close as she could ever get to approximating a smile. "You think we're here to make out or something, handsome?" she asked, and though it sounded amiable enough, he'd worked with her long enough to know that the sweeter her tone, the madder she was. "We're here on business. So turn the fucking radio off."

Bosco obeyed, suddenly feeling a bit indignant. "When is this guy ever gonna show up? We've been here for almost an hour. Shouldn't we just go to him?"

Cruz sat back in her seat. "He gets home from work at exactly ten PM. We're better just to wait another fifteen minutes instead of driving all the way across town."

Bosco didn't reply. Dougie Francis was a drug dealer, supposedly now an_ ex-dealer_. _Supposedly_ now clean. Bosco thought that was pure bullshit, but either way, Dougie probably still had a lot of friends. He was low on the food chain, but that didn't matter, especially once Cruz worked her magic; whether he was truly clean or not, with a little _persuasion_ Dougie could become a veritable fountain of knowledge on just who was producing the latest batch of crystal meth to hit the streets.

Fifteen minutes passed; Cruz went quiet again, only pausing at one point to hawk another large wad of phlegm out the window. 

Dougie was a punctual little jagoff; at about 9:58 he appeared, hurrying along the street towards his building. He was a moon-faced, pockmarked kid with crewcut black hair who could have been anywhere between twenty-one and forty. Sallow and heavyset and dressed in a heavy, unseasonable bomber jacket, Dougie Francis sure as hell looked his part tonight; rung number one on the ladder.

"There's our boy," Cruz purred. 

They allowed him ten minutes to get into his building and up to his apartment. Cruz eased her door open. 

"I know this bastard," she said as they crossed the street. "He probably won't give us any trouble. But he's been using as well as dealing. He's probably halfway to junkie. I don't need to say any more than that." She glanced back at Bosco. "Do I, handsome?"

Bosco smiled thinly. "No, ma'am."

"Second floor, apartment 2C. He's Hispanic. Doesn't look it or sound it, but he is. So let me do the talking."

The approached Dougie's apartment, badges around their necks and weapons drawn. Cruz sidled up to his door and knocked lightly. 

A small crash from inside, as if something had been knocked over. A muffled curse. 

Then: "Who is it?"

"It's Paula!" Cruz whined. Her accent thickened and her voice became a kind of petulant schoolgirl snivel. Bosco never could get over how drastically the woman could change her entire bearing. "Lemme iiiiiinnnn, Dougie!"

"Go 'way!"

She switched to Spanish and cooed something soft and melodic. Bosco curbed a small thrill of excitement. He didn't understand any of it, but he most definitely caught the tone. It was provocative and full of the promise of good and sweet things. A man would have to be either gay or dead to resist it. And he wasn't too sure about gay. 

From inside, Dougie cleared his throat nervously. Bosco could relate.

The latch clicked; the moment the door cracked, Cruz shoulder-charged it, breaking the chain and sending Dougie reeling across the room. Cruz was on him half a second later.

"How you doin', Dougie?" she asked sweetly, slamming him face-first up against the wall. Behind her, Bosco closed the door and sauntered over to them, weapon lowered. Christ, he hardly needed to be here at all.

"Ah-heee!" Dougie shrieked; it sounded like some weird birdcall. "Cruz! I didn't do nuthin'!"

_Oh Christ_, Bosco thought. _A nickel for every time they start with that one. Please. Just one nickel and I'd retire._

Cruz swung him around to face her and moved into kissing distance. "We have to talk, Dougie. Can we come in? Maybe you'd like to offer two hardworking cops a cup of coffee, hmm?"

A slavering, idiot grin split his face. "Wh-what do ya wanna know? I'm clean now, you know. Really and truly. I'll tell you whatever I can. What do you wanna know?"

Bosco leaned in over Cruz' shoulder. "Oh, let's forget all the bullshit. Who's your new supplier?"

Dougie became the picture of pie-eyed innocence. "You guys took him out. We're all thankful. It was a wonderful public service. The city is in your debt. And I'm clean now."

Bosco reached around Cruz' outstretched arm and slapped Dougie lightly across the cheek. "You do _not_ want to be a smartass right now. We've _seen_ you dealin' again, dumbass" - a bald-faced lie, of course, but Dougie didn't have to know it - "so where'd you get it from?"

"Drugs are bad for you, you know ..." Dougie Francis said gravely, though he was grinning again. Bosco was genuinely shocked. From a pissant bottom-feeder like this, such a reaction was all wrong. Was Dougie stoned? He thought not. More likely he really _was_ clean and figured it meant he was bulletproof. 

Poor ol' Dougie obviously didn't know Sergeant Cruz as well as he seemed to think he did. 

"Is that so?" Cruz hissed. "That's funny, because you know, Dougie, I'm betting you have a little something on you right now."

Dougie bit his lip in what he probably thought was a parody of coquettishness. "Well, I don't, not today. I'm straightening up. Flying right. Check me over, baby. If you'd like to _strip-search_ me, I think I could handle that ..."

Cruz' smile somehow managed to become even more predatory, and her voice sweetened. The sweeter the tone, Bosco thought again, the more pissed off she was. The more pissed off she was, the more ruthless she became. He suspected Dougie was about to discover this. It would be a discovery that would prove _most_ amusing to watch. 

"Oh, I think you have a little something," she said, withdrawing a small baggie of cocaine from her pocket and holding it under Dougie's nose. "Ah-ah," she crooned. "Look what we have here, Dougie!" She turned to Bosco. "Can you believe this?"

Bosco grinned. "I'm shocked and appalled."

Dougie's eyes widened, and at last, at _long_ last and to Bosco's greatest satisfaction, the jagoff's stupid fucking grin disappeared.

Neither cop ever saw it coming. Here was a man with a nine-millimeter in his face, an unpredictable, hot-headed cop on the other end of it, and all of _that_ was not enough to stop him from taking a shot at her.

Cruz cried out, more in surprise than pain, and lost her grip on Dougie. She stumbled backwards, and Bosco had time to see the long slash across her midsection, the blood already welling up, the glint of silver in Dougie's hand, which neither of them had noticed inching under his jacket the whole time he was babbling. 

Dougie emitted another of those odd, screeching birdcall screams, tossed the knife aside, and bolted for the door. 

Bosco turned to Cruz, who was doubled over and clutching her stomach. 

"I'm fine!" Cruz screamed, waving him away. "Get him! _Get_ him!"

Bosco didn't argue. If she was hurt then she was hurt and he couldn't do a damn thing about it. Letting Dougie get away would only grind some salt into the wound. So to speak.

Priorities, after all, have to be kept straight in a crisis. 

Dougie went down the stairs two at a time and on out into the street, apparently thinking he had gotten some kind of lead. 

In actuality, Dougie was slow and far too stupid to even know how to run away from cops properly; he ran in a straight line, making no attempts to throw off his pursuer or try to fake him out. When Dougie finally did get a bit creative, he swerved directly into a three-story parking garage.

Bosco, already gloriously high on adrenaline, smiled; they always seemed to go for the fuckin' dead ends. 

It was a beautiful tackle, and Bosco was vaguely disappointed that no-one was there to see it. That _Cruz_ wasn't there to see it. Bosco did not so much hear but rather _felt_ the muffled pop as Dougie's arm broke under their combined weight, and the accompanying howl of pain was supremely gratifying. 

He got to his feet, hauling the screaming sack of shit up with him and slamming him across the hood of a nearby car. A punch or two, now. Would a few of Dougie's teeth look good spread across the concrete, perhaps? Yes, that would be in order. Work the kidneys? Why, of course! If this little asshole had hurt Cruz, he'd be drinking dinner and pissing blood for the next six months.

"Boscorelli!"

He turned. Cruz had tracked them, probably by the sound of Dougie's shriek alone.

She was perfectly all right. The tight beige blouse she wore was cut across the belly, and there were a few smears of blood around it. But the wound was, he would discover later, little more than a graze.

Cruz was holding Dougie's blade (which wasn't much more than a shitty little pocket jackknife) in one hand and her unholstered gun in the other. She stepped up to him while Bosco cuffed his hands behind his back, leaned in, and with great care she spit directly into Dougie's face. 

Dougie howled again, this time in disgust; it wasn't just saliva but another impressive wad of phlegm. It oozed down and began to dangle pendulously from the end of his nose. 

"You cut me, you asshole," she snarled, and Bosco picked up the faintest hint of a quiver in her voice. "You know that? You fucking _cut_ me." 

Dougie seemed only able to whimper, making strange, idiotic little _moo-moo-moo_ noises with his lips. He was _seeing_ Cruz now, Bosco thought. The _real_ Cruz. The Cruz who was perfectly capable of falsifying a dying declaration, the Cruz who was perfectly capable of planting drugs ...

"Uncuff him," she said tersely.

Bosco looked at her and understood her intentions immediately, aware of their surroundings, aware of the fact that they were basically alone in the garage and out of view of the street. He felt suddenly very uneasy. 

Cruz' large, dark eyes were wild and hard and full of black rage. 

He knew what she wanted, and he wanted to hear her to say it. "Why?"

Cruz held out the little knife, hilt-first. "Uncuff him and give him his knife."

"_Why_?"

She inclined her head. "I think you know, Boscorelli."

That he did.

"No," Dougie moaned. It was almost too low to hear. 

Bosco clenched his teeth and looked at her. Her lips trembled slightly, but she held his gaze. 

Easy. Just too easy. Cruz shoots Dougie, and in the end he didn't even have to be _holding_ the knife. Shit, the weapon itself was barely worth _calling_ a knife, but that didn't matter either. All she would need would be Bosco's testimony backing her up; Dougie pulled a knife, lunged at her, and _bang_. 

The dying declaration she falsified; he could back her up on that. Easily. He was comfortable on that one. And if she really wanted to plant drugs on some jagoff, well, he guessed he could back that up, too ...

But what she was suggesting here ...

She was getting impatient. "Boscorelli," she growled, biting each word out. "Uncuff. Him. _Now_."

And it hit him; Cruz was scared. Dougie's shitty little pocket knife probably couldn't have really hurt her, not seriously. Nevertheless, she'd made a mistake. She'd been sloppy, she'd let her guard down and become just a bit too complacent, and had gotten a nasty little taste of her own mortality for her trouble. And on their way in, _she_ had warned _him_ about Dougie. 

She was scared, but with Cruz, any strong emotion generally translated instantly into anger. Into _rage_. She wasn't thinking clearly. Simple as that. 

It wasn't to say the idea of putting an end to this waste of skin didn't appeal to him. Deep down Bosco believed that the Dougie Francises of the world got what they deserved, that being poor or not having a daddy or getting molested every other night by uncle Bubba didn't give you a license to be a fucking social leech. 

But Cruz would be guilty of murder, and he would be an accessory. He had purely selfish reasons at heart and he'd be the first to admit it. If, somehow, it ever came out ...

_If Faith found out_, a dark little voice said. _She'd rat you out. She'd reject you and she'd fuck you over _good_, buddy. She might even be thinking of doing something right now, about the dying declaration business. Do you think she'd hesitate over _murder_?_

"No," he said, answering both his own internal question and stating his intentions to Cruz. 

It was, after all, for Cruz' own good as well as his.

She smiled humorlessly. "No?"

"No. It's going too far."

She feigned shock. "_What_ is going to far, Officer Boscorelli?"

"I won't let you do it. Not that."

Dougie watched this exchange wide-eyed. "Hey, guys, you can stop trying to scare me now, I mean, I'm sorry ... I'm sorry I tried to cut you, Cruz ... I'm sorry ... I didn't mean ..."

"Shut up, jagoff," Bosco said, cuffing him lightly but absently upside the head. He turned to Cruz. "Take a few shots at him. Throw a few punches. Beat the livin' shit out of him, I don't care. I'll even hold him for you. Whatever you want. But I'm not gonna stand here and let you shoot this sack of shit in cold blood."

"Joke's over, guys," Dougie whimpered, beginning to cry.

Cruz laughed bitterly. "What would you do, Boscorelli? Hmm? What would you do if I just went right ahead anyway?"

Bosco didn't answer. He shouldn't _need_ to answer.

He'd stop her. That was what he'd do. By physical force, if necessary. 

Wouldn't he?

"Calm down," he said, suddenly just wanting this to be over. "I know that it scared you-"

Cruz did not just _grit_ her teeth; she _bared_ them, like an animal. "Oh, you think that-"

"Shut up and listen to me!" Bosco yelled, and was pleased with the look of genuine surprise he got in response. Christ al-fuckin-mighty, this mess was mostly _her_ fault. "He attacked you with a knife, Cruz! Assault on a police officer! Hell, maybe attempted _murder_ of a police officer! Better to let him face what's ahead of him! Let him get his ass reamed out for the next twenty years!"

Dougie moaned. 

Bosco lowered his voice. "I'm not gonna let you throw your career and your life away over such a shitty little thing as this."

Cruz was visibly trembling now, with either lingering shock or rage; probably both. "You listen to me, Boscorelli," she said softly. "I do _not_ need you to protect me. I do not need _you_. Get that straight_ right now_. Just because I fucked you that night-"

Bosco bristled. "That is _not_ what this is about!"

"_Like hell it isn't!_" she screamed. Her voice broke on the last syllable, followed by a brief spasm of coughing. "Like hell it isn't," she repeated quietly when the fit passed. "You think we're gonna get settled, get married, turn out a few kids, is that it? Is that how deluded you really are, Boscorelli?"

Bosco shrugged. "Whatever. You're not gonna kill this guy. Let's leave it at that."

Cruz nodded and viciously jammed her pistol back into its clamshell holster. She offered him one last brutal, ferocious smile, and started back to the car.

A fresh series of sobs issued from Dougie. Sweet relief.

Bosco still felt no sympathy for him; the car ride back to the precinct was gonna be nasty. He grabbed Dougie by the collar of his stupid jacket and propelled him forward. "Shut up, jagoff."

"W-w-would she r-really have shot me?" Dougie sobbed. His nose was still coated in mucous. 

"Damn straight," Bosco said grimly, knowing it was true. "Damn straight."


	2. Chapter 2 June 23 Day 2

Just wanted to say thanks for the encouraging reviews! Chapter 2 is here: Bosco tries to sort things out with Faith, but it's not over yet ...

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**Chapter 2**

June 23

Day 2

  
  


Faith Yokas sneezed. Three times, in quick succession.

"Bless you," Ty Davis said without looking up.

Bosco felt a flash of irritation. He was hunched over his locker, muttering and pretending to rummage ineffectually through his duffel bag, but really what he was doing was trying to think. "'Bless you?' Come on, Davis, who actually says that?"

Ty looked up from buttoning his shirt, genuinely puzzled. "What? It's just something you say. Didn't your mother teach you manners?"

Bosco only grunted and continued fidgeting in his locker. 

Faith rolled her eyes at Ty, who only smiled thinly and went back to his shirt. "Thanks so much for your sympathy, Bos," she said dryly, drawing a Kleenex from the box in her locker. "You know, this really stinks. I don't usually get sick this time of year."

David shrugged. "Ah, there was something on the news this morning. The flu. Some new Chinese or German strain or something. I've had the sniffles the past couple of days, but it's no big deal. I'll shake it off fast. Vitamin C, y'know. Makes you damn near invulnerable."

"I'm not feeling so invulnerable," John Sullivan muttered, checking the speedloaders on his gunbelt. "Throat's killing me. Head feels like it's stuffed with shit." Sully looked up at Davis and Bosco half-noticed something pass between them, an unspoken little something that seemed to carry an uneasy weight with it. "It's _nothing_, though. Must just be the same thing you guys have."

Bosco slammed the door of his locker and groaned. "Oh, would you listen to this! Did I take a wrong turn and walk into a friggin' nursing home this morning? Why don't you just go the distance and start comparing what brand of diaper has better absorbency? You know what this is? Psychotropic, that's all. One person gets sick, everybody else wants in on the sympathy."

Faith shook her head. "The term is 'psychosomatic,' Bosco. And what's wrong with you today, anyway? You've been jumping down everybody's throat every time they open their mouths. I suppose you Anti-Crime alpha males never get colds."

Bosco grinned and patted his chest. "Feel like a million, baby."

Faith blew her nose. "Well, in that case you can handle the driving today. _Baby_."

They went through roll call and started for the parking lot. On the way Bosco kept quiet, waiting for Faith to start in on him. Waiting for her to ask about Cruz, about Anti-Crime and why he was back in uniform today. And Faith would, of course, try to make it sound innocent, light, just some friendly banter between partners. 

And it would, of course, come out sounding stiff and rehearsed. 

Was there a rift opening between them? If there was it could mean trouble, because he was no longer at all sure about Cruz; she had not spoken to him since the argument over Dougie, and now she'd pulled a disappearing act today. Could she be scared? Worried that if Dougie tried to make a case of it, Bosco would back him up? Scared that Bosco might say something anyway, that he might suddenly decide to go all Faith Yokas and file a report stating that he'd had to stop a fellow a police officer from shooting an unarmed suspect in cold blood?

Because he wouldn't do a thing like that, and he hoped Cruz understood that. Maybe what she had wanted to do last night was bad, but such an act of back-stabbing treachery towards another cop - especially _Cruz_, of all people - would be unforgivable. And if Dougie tried to make a thing out of it (which he wouldn't; Dougie was a bred-in-the-bones coward, and if he hadn't been scared of Cruz before, he sure as hell was now) Bosco would be there to back up her side of the story. 

And now something else was intruding on him, another uncomfortable little idea ... what if he'd let Cruz do it? Would there really have been _that_ many questions asked afterwards? Would it really have been _murder_, in the strictest sense of the term? Dougie was a master at looking pathetic and weak and harmless, but he _hadn't_ been pathetic and weak and harmless, had he? Okay, the knife was small, but a knife was still a knife and it _was_ possible that he could have killed her. Or at least badly injured her. 

That brought forth a nauseatingly clear picture; Cruz standing in Dougie's shitty little apartment, looking down in surprised horror at long, pinkish-purple ropes of intestine hanging from her lacerated belly.

He pushed the image away with an internal curse. If Dougie had tried to kill him in such a sniveling, cowardly way, wouldn't he have felt the same?

_Can I get a_ hell yeah_?_

The truth of the matter was that Dougie Francis would have been dismissed by all but the most limp-wristed of bleeding hearts as No Big Loss. The word of two cops against a dead drug dealer, a drug dealer who probably had no family to ask questions or start sounding the Great American War Cry of _Lawsuit_.

And so now he knew Cruz was capable of murder. Okay, so what? So was he. Bosco had always believed _everyone_ was, if pushed hard enough in the right (or wrong, depending on how you wanted to look at it) direction ...

"Bosco?"

"Huh? What?"

Faith rolled her eyes. "Oh, Jeez."

He frowned. "What?"

"Nothing. Look, I only asked how things have been going lately. Clean out your ears and listen to me, will you? You and Cruz win the War on Drugs yet?"

Ah, so here it was.

He ignored the undertone of sarcasm and answered the question straight. "Ah, we caught some jagoff dealer yesterday. We were just there to get some helpful information from him, you know? All real friendly. And what does he do? He takes a swing at Cruz with a knife."

"Ouch," Faith said without much sympathy.

Bosco glared at her. "She could have been killed, Faith."

She nodded, mock-solemn. "Oh, God forbid."

"She's a _cop_, Faith!" Bosco shook his head. "I can't believe you lately."

She uttered a quick snort of laughter. "_You_ can't believe _me_ lately? That's cute, Bos. Say that again. You have no idea how prim and proper and snooty you sounded just now." She stopped in front of a drinking fountain and leaned down. 

"Yeah, well, you don't have to worry about running into Cruz for the next day or two. She called in sick."

Faith tried to laugh and choked on her water. "Sick? _Cruz_? _Cruz_ called in sick? God, Bosco, I'd have thought you'd need a rocket launcher to make a dent in that bitch." She sneezed again, then put a hand up in mock-apology when she saw his expression. "Sorry, sorry. She's not a bitch." She laughed. "I feel so much better now knowing I probably got this cold from your little Anti-Crime girlfriend. You know what's gonna happen, don't you? I'll pass this right along to Fred and the kids. Always happens. Charlie will be whining, Emily will keep wanting more time off school, and Fred ... Fred gets pretty hard to love when he's sick, Bosco."

Bosco had long since stopped listening. 

"Would you stop calling her that?" he snapped.

They were outside now, in the parking lot. Faith turned to him as they reached their cruiser. "What?"

"Stop calling Cruz my 'Anti-Crime girlfriend,' okay? She's not."

Faith slid into the passenger seat and waited for him to get in next to her. "You slept with her, right?"

Bosco started the car. "Yeah ..."

He'd figured Faith wouldn't be able to resist rubbing it in a little (or maybe a _lot_), and she didn't disappoint. "Oh, what? Did she _use_ you, Bos? It was a one-night stand, wasn't it? You thought it was more, but for her it was just a little roll in the hay. She said she'd call you, right? And she never did." Faith chuckled. "About time a man got a taste of _that_ medicine."

Bosco eased the car out onto the street. "Just drop it, okay?"

Faith shrugged and muffled a cough with her hand. "Okay, Bosco."

A touchy silence seemed to descend over both of them in a thin, slimy curtain. Bosco didn't like it. 

In fact, he thought, it would be fair to say that he _loathed_ it. Over the past few days it had suddenly become as if they were total strangers to each other, and that was stupid as well as being irritating. Stupid. _Ridiculous_. 

_Get it out in the clear. This shit can't go on any longer. Absolutely not._

"Look," he snapped suddenly, pulling the car over to the curb. "Number one, Cruz is not my girlfriend. All right? Are we straight on that?"

Faith turned to him, surprised - and somewhat chagrined - by the genuine animosity in his tone. 

"Okay, Bosco," she said soberly. "Sure. I'm sorry if ... I'm sorry."

"And I'm sorry I lied to you about Cruz, about the dying declaration, all right? I didn't want to ..." He shook his head helplessly. "I didn't want to _involve_ you. Okay? Can we leave it there?"

"Okay, Bos."

He clenched his teeth. "Faith?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you going to try to ... are you gonna make something out of it?"

Faith lowered her eyes and said nothing. Neither of them had ever put it out there in such succinct terms. 

_What if she says yes. Hmm? You don't really expect her to, but what if she does? What will you do?_

_Or here's a more interesting and _waaaay_ more cheerful question; what will _Cruz_ do?_

"Faith?"

"No." She looked up at him again. "No, Bosco."

He nodded, hiding how relieved he really was. "Okay. Because you know, what we did, it brought crime down in that area ..."

"I know, Bos ..."

"There's probably a percentage or a statistic or something to go with it, but all I know is, crime is down in that neighborhood because of what we did. We reduced the drug problem in the _whole damned area_, Faith. Why would that be wrong? Because Cruz pretended that one worthless jagoff gangbanger made a dying declaration against another worthless jagoff gangbanger?" He shook his head. "No way."

_Great! _some dim little voice cried before he could completely silence it._ Now tell her about what Cruz wanted to do to reduce the_ Dougie_ problem!_

Faith pursed her lips and nodded. "Okay, I can accept that. ... But listen to me, Bos. Okay?"

_Oh boy, here it comes._

Faith studied him thoughtfully for a moment. "I don't know exactly how you look at her, Bosco, but I'm going to tell you for the last time - she's trouble. You think you're her friend? You're not. I don't think someone like her can have friends. I don't think she even understands the term. I think she's missing a few things upstairs, Bosco. Like a conscience."

He opened his mouth to disagree-

Faith cut him off. "I saved her _ass_ that night, in that alley. Did she thank me? No. She just decided to mouth off to me a little more. After I saved her _life_, Bosco. That just went right over her head. And you know what? Just before I shot that guy, I hesitated. There was this sick, twisted little part of me that considered just letting the son of a bitch choke her. I hated myself for that later, because it was just exactly like something Cruz would do."

Bosco said nothing. He _wanted_ to protest, wanted to-

_Remember Dougie crying? Remember him saying "joke's over, guys" in his ratty little whisper? Remember Cruz' eyes? No pity in them, was there? No emotion in them at all but that inarticulate, animal hate. In fact, they were not even quite what you'd call _sane_, were they? Remember her gun loose and ready at her side, the impatient way her hand kept kneading the grip? How badly she wanted to do it! To just gun him down like a dog! What do you call that? Hmm? Hmm? _

"She had a hard life growing up, Faith," he said softly, but it sounded hollow in his ears. Hell, he didn't even technically know if it was true. "Her sister ... all those years with that junkie sister, and then the overdose ..."

_Ah, but that's no excuse, is it? You've said it yourself, dumbass. Remember?_

"A lot of people have had a hard life growing up, Bosco. Okay, so Cruz became a cop. That's good. She works Anti-Crime. Okay, that's good, too. She hates drugs and she has good reason to. Okay. The problem is, she doesn't care how she gets the job done. It's all a big game to her. She uses people. She uses _kids_ against their parents. She'll walk over anybody who gets in her way, and you know what? That includes you. She'll turn on you as soon as it suits her. If she gets caught doing something illegal, it'll be you she tries to pin it on. The woman is a _snake_, Bosco. Or if you wanna get technical, she's a sociopath."

That, he thought, was going a bit far. "Faith-"

But her gaze remained steady, and with angry, trapped dismay he knew she was right.

And on the heels of that, he suddenly had a powerful and very disturbing urge to strike her across the face. 

He turned away quickly, horrified. 

_Great speech, Faith,_ he thought bitterly. _You oughtta be writing that shit down._

"Okay," he said tightly. "Point taken."

Faith sighed. "Bosco ..."

"Let's just drop it for good, okay? We're past it now."

Ah, but they weren't, and both of them knew it. 

  
  


***

  
  


It was quite clear that the owner of the silver Lexus had caused the accident. Quite clear because two police officers watched it happen right in front of them; Bosco and Faith saw the Lexus as it rounded the corner in turn that was both too early and too tight, watched the back end almost clip a lightpole, watched the front end plow into the back of a box truck that was parked in front of a pharmacy. 

The Lexus' nose immediately became wedged under the back bumper of the larger vehicle, and damned if the driver didn't throw the car into reverse and try to pull out of it. The box truck's bumper held on, though the Lexus' driver might have eventually freed it had it not been for two mitigating factors. Factor A being Bosco and Faith, who pulled up behind the mess, and Factor B being the box truck's driver, who came out of the pharmacy and, upon seeing what had happened, promptly went crazy.

Ah, what fun, New York.

The truck driver had been pushing an empty dolly back for another load, and when he saw the mess his reaction was eerily quick. It was like he didn't even need to think, as if seeing that a car had hit his truck (doing absolutely no real damage) just naturally called for an instantaneous wanton act of violence, as natural as scratching an itch. He immediately swung the dolly back over his shoulder, and with a wild, inarticulate yelp of rage, he brought it down in a heavy, awkward arc to strike the already crumpled hood of the Lexus. 

"_Hey!_" Faith shouted as the truck driver began to heave the dolly up for another round. He ignored her and began to gather momentum. She put a hand on the butt of her gun and shouted again. "_HEY!_"

The dolly stopped halfway through its arc of descent, ending up suspended over the man's head in a rather impressive show of working-man strength. The truck driver looked over, saw the uniform, more importantly saw the hand on the gun, and lowered the makeshift weapon. A bit _reluctantly_ all the same, Faith thought.

"Check him!" she yelled to Bosco, pointing at the Lexus' driver, who had stopped trying to free his car and was now attempting to get out. The impact had warped the car's frame, and it was proving a bit difficult.

"Work ..." the Lexus' driver was saying as he pushed half-heartedly against the door. "Gotta get ... work! ... Shit! Shit! Shit on wholewheat bread! Work!"

"Well, now that sounds tasty," Bosco muttered, adding his own strength to the car's door. It gave with a thin shriek and opened far enough for the driver to slip out. He was maybe in his late twenties or early thirties, a clean-shaven, good-looking carbon copy of any garden variety Corporate Executive On His Way Up. Blood from a short, jagged scalp wound ran freely down the right side of his face and over his suit, which was a dull gray that matched his car and in Bosco's estimation probably cost half as much. 

"You want to tell me why you just rammed your car up that guy's ass?" Bosco asked mildly. 

"Work," Mr. On-His-Way-Up said gravely. "Shit on wholewheat bread."

Then he sneezed directly into Bosco's face. 

It was warm and wet and _oh_ so slimy. 

"Aaaawww!" Bosco cried, swiping at his eyes. "Aaaawww _shit_! What the _hell_ is wrong with you!?"

"I gotta get to work," Mr. On-His-Way-Up said matter-of-factly. "I'm two hours late. At least I think I am ... shit ... shit on wholewheat bread."

"_I'll give you shit on wholewheat bread, jagoff!_" Bosco howled. Christ, it had gotten into his _mouth_. He needed water. _Now_. Then he remembered the way Cruz had spit that big, green gob in Dougie's face last night, the way it dangled from the skinny little junkie's nose, and suddenly he what he felt most like doing was puking. "_I'll sit here and make you _eat_ shit on wholewheat bread!"_

"Bosco!"

He looked up. It was Faith. Faith had deposited the dolly-swinging truck driver in the back of the cruiser and was walking towards them. "Bosco, _what_ is the problem?"

"Sneezed!" he screamed. "This moron just sneezed right in my face!"

Faith ignored him completely and turned her attention to Mr. On-His-Way-Up, eyeing him cautiously. "Sir, have you been drinking?"

"No!" Bosco snapped, still toweling off and spitting. "He hasn't!"

"How do _you_ know?"

Bosco gaped at her. "I think I just swallowed a gallon of this guy's _snot_, Faith! Believe me, I'd smell it, I'd _taste_ it, hell, I'd be half-drunk _myself_ by now!"

"I have to get to work," Mr. On-His-Way-Up said. His tone stopped just short of being urgent and instead only seemed foggy and dazed. "I ... have to close a deal today ..." -he sneezed again, this time mercifully turning his head- "It's very important that I get in. I'm late already." He put his bleeding head in his hands. "Oooohh, shit. Oh shit on wholewheat bread."

"Sir, where do you work?"

He looked up, confused. Everything must have sloshed forward when he put his head down, and now his nose was running freely down his face. "What? ... Uh ... I do real-estate. I do real-estate. Re-Max. Manhattan."

"_Manhattan!?_" Faith exclaimed. "Sir, you're pretty far out of your way, do you realize that?"

"Hmm?"

Faith sighed. "Did you take any pills today? Medication? Any drugs of any kind?"

"Hmm? ... um ... no ... yes ... I took some Tylenol. I got the flu, real bad. The last two days or so. I was in Texas two days ago for a ... a conference. Must have picked it up there."

"Just Tylenol?"

"Fucker's wasted!" the truck driver called disgustedly from the back of the cruiser.

"Shut up!" Faith yelled back. She turned to Bosco. "Better get a bus down here. I don't know if it's drugs, head injury or fever, but this guy is seriously altered. I'm betting on fever."

"Fever?"

She led him a few paces away from Mr. On-His-Way-Up. "Bosco, did you not feel the heat from that guy?"

"I tend to save my energy for those wild Friday night parties."

"Funny, Bos. The poor guy's on fire. You can feel it, like, three feet away from him."

Bosco spat again and rolled his eyes. "Look, whatever, just so long as we don't have to-" 

He broke off and craned his neck over her shoulder as something caught his eye. 

_Well, shit_, he thought. _Shit on wholewheat bread_.

A man had climbed a streetlight and was now sitting on top of it, some joker in redneck duds; shitkickers and bluejeans and a denim jacket, straddling the damn thing just as neat as you please.

"What the hell is that dumbass doin' up there?"

Faith turned. "What?"

Bosco blinked, and with no real surprise saw that the man was gone. Momentary lapse. Brain fart. 

The only thing up there on that pole was a fat black crow. 

"Jagoff," he muttered at it for no particular reason. 

Faith followed his gaze. "Yeah, Bos. I've never seen such flagrant abuse of public property by flying vermin. You wanna put the cuffs on him, or will I?" She looked at him warily. "You all right?"

_Momentary lapse my ass. The guy was there. Clear as day. I _saw_ him._

"Yeah, fine. Why wouldn't I be?" He turned back to Mr. On-His-Way-Up, suddenly needing to change the subject. "Can you believe that? Guy looks like he's got the goddam plague and he doesn't even have the sense to take a day off. And look at the mess he gets himself in."

Faith shrugged and started for the cruiser, where the truck driver was now pounding his fists against the door and yelling about his delivery schedule. "I'll go call for the bus and shut him up. You stay here with the other one." About halfway over she stopped and turned, grinning. "He really sneezed on you?"

Bosco scowled at her. "What, you think it's funny?"

She forced down the smile, though not very successfully; it kept pulling the corners of her mouth. "No. Me? Think it's funny? Of course not." She saw where his gaze was slowly drifting to again and sighed. "Bosco, would you stop lookin' at that damn bird? Look, _you_ go call for the ambulance and shut that idiot up, and I'll stay with Sneezy."

"No," he said absently. "You go."

Faith groaned and continued to the cruiser, and Bosco kept watching the crow, becoming more and more sure that it was watching him right back. It's head tipped this way. That way. It cawed once, little black tar-drop eyes marking him. Some dim memory on the periphery of his mind seemed to trigger and was gone almost immediately, some millisecond of deja vu he didn't even really feel. 

"Bosco! Look out!"

He turned; Faith was jogging back over to him and pointing at the Lexus' driver, good ol' Mr. On-His-Way-Up, who was wandering dazedly right out into traffic. 

Bosco swore and took after him before the stupid asshole could add a few more pages to tonight's paperwork, then led him back over to the curb and once again sat him next to his car. Mr. On-His-Way-Up seemed happy enough to comply. He was gone. _Fever my ass_, Bosco thought. _This guy's righteously stoned._

"You call for the bus?" he asked.

"Yeah, I did. You were supposed to keep an eye on that guy and instead I see you doing this amateur birdwatching thing." She frowned. "Just _what_ is your problem today?"

"I told you, Faith, _nothing_."

She jabbed a finger at him. "You'd better get your shit together, Bosco and let this Cruz thing go. Right?"

Bosco felt his fists clench at his sides, felt the nails digging into his palms. But he kept his voice neutral. "Right."

The paramedics arrived; Kim Zambrano and Alex Taylor took charge of Mr. On-The-Way-Up. The Lexus and the truck were dealt with, and Bosco and Faith ended up on their way back to the Five-Five with the truck driver. 

And Bosco found he could _not_ let the Cruz thing go. An unpleasant idea had occurred to him that he might not be able to let it go until he told Faith about last night. Now there was a wild idea: tell Faith about the Dougie Francis thing. It would be a spectacularly stupid thing to do; he'd diffused her on the other business, the dying declaration thing. Why go firing the other barrel of the shotgun into his face by bringing up the Dougie incident?

But partners didn't lie to each other, did they?

On the other hand, partners didn't stab each other in the back, which is what he'd be doing to Cruz.

Ah, Christ, why did nothing seem as simple as it used to be?

The stupid jagoff truck driver in the back seat didn't make it any easier to think, like that pointless bitching and moaning in the locker room earlier. On their way back to the precinct, the driver made several vocal complaints known, none of which were very original; among other things, how New York was full of bad drivers, how the streets were too crowded, too narrow, that there were too damn many people getting hooked on legal pills by psychiatrists these days.

He also sneezed several times.


	3. Chapter 3 June 24 Day 3

Once again, thanks for the support, compliments and encouragement! Here's Chapter 3; right now I'm seeing about eight or nine chapters left to go. In this one, Cruz tries to cut Bosco out of her life for good, and Faith starts getting worried about the growing flu epidemic. ...

  


A word of advance warning; the character deaths start happening in Chapter 4. Sorry, but that's the nature of this particular crossover and part the theme of the story in general ... Look on the bright side, though - it includes Cruz ;)

  


For those of you who also have read (or seen) the "Stand" - Cosmic Castaway, I'm looking in your direction :) - Chapter 4 (which is almost done and should be up by the end of the weekend) will be where the many tie-ins and references to the book/movie will really start to take off ...

Anyway, enough of my rambling ... here's Chapter 3 :)

* * *

  
  
  
  


**Chapter 3**

June 24

Day 3

  
  


Bosco picked Faith's folded newspaper up off the seat and scanned the headlines without any real interest. An attempted coup in India had been dealt a swift and bloody end; another victory had been scored for gay rights; police in Wyoming were searching for someone who blew up a power station; Lloyd Henreid, the "Baby-Faced Killer," had been caught after a bloody tri-state crime spree through Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico. Fun stuff. Why Faith bothered with this depressing shit when she was surrounded by it every day was beyond him. 

He tossed the paper back on the seat and drummed his fingers nervously on the dashboard. He could see Faith through the window of the quaint little coffee house they were trying out today, a cozy little mom-and-pop called Hank's. She was waiting in line, but there were only three people ahead of her. She'd be out in under five minutes.

It might, however, be enough time to make a quick phone call.

"Okay," he whispered softly. He patted his pockets, felt the jingle of change, and stepped out of the car. "Okay. Here we go."

He went into Hank's and nodded absently to Faith. An old gent with a fringe of baby-fine mad-scientist hair ringing the back of his head was at the counter, taking his sweet time ordering herbal tea. He was complaining vocally about the terrible cold he'd come down with, inserting several long-winded excerpts from his own personal life history just for variety. Hank himself was taking the order; he was smiling and trying politely to hurry the old guy along, agreeing that it was a tough old world; the papers said a particularly nasty strain of the flu was going around. 

It looked as if Faith wouldn't be out in five minutes after all. 

Good. He went over to the payphone in the corner.

He'd called Cruz the previous evening, counting eighteen rings before hanging up. When he'd tried again a half-hour later, he'd gotten a busy signal. Four hours and five more attempts later, the line was still busy.

He couldn't wait any longer. He had to talk to her, had to know where things stood. She'd called in sick again today, and with all this talk the last few days of colds and flu, Bosco thought that there might be some validity in her claim. 

_Might_ be. Operative word: _might_.

It could also be a convenient excuse. An excuse for _what_, though? He didn't know. But he found it hard to believe that someone with Cruz' stamina could be so completely floored by a virus. She'd been "sick" since what he was coming to think of as the Night of the Near-Extermination of Dougie Francis. He had to talk to her and straighten everything out. _Everything_.

One ring ... two ... three ... four ...

_Click_. Bosco felt something heavy drop into his gut. 

"H'llo?"

Cruz' voice. Slurred and drowsy. 

"Hi, Sarge. It's Bosco."

Long pause. "Bosc'relli? Whaddaya want?"

Ah, now there was a good question. Bosco realized that he'd spent very little time _planning_ this call; he'd been concentrating too hard on the task itself to figure out how he was going to start. "Uh ... um ... Just wondered how you were doing?"

A drawn-out coughing fit came in response. "Sick," Cruz said testily, voice clearing a bit. "What do you think?"

And suddenly he knew, knew with dark and unquestionable certainty that she had another man there with her. At the same time some part of him realized that it was a stupid idea, but nevertheless it stuck. It was just too easy to imagine. He could see her, sprawled naked across her bed, some jagoff who looked like he'd fallen out of a beefcake calender laying half on top of her. He could see her holding the phone and grinning; _oh boy, here's that stupid little pup Boscorelli again_.

"You sure?" he said, keeping his voice neutral. God, the bastard was probably there _right now_, at this very moment, _doing things_ to her even as she talked. That was why she was faking the hangover voice and the coughing. Just covering up.

"Look, Boscorelli" - two quick sneezes - "I'm just _so_ flattered that you want to check up on me. Now, do you want anything else? 'Cause if you don't, I feel like eight different kinds of shit here, okay?"

_Just say it, dumbass._

Bosco punched the phone lightly and petulantly, gritting his teeth. "I need to know where we stand, Cruz. I need to know what our future is together."

_Oh, God_. _Could that have come out sounding any more fucking stupid?_

Stunned silence on the other end.

Finally: "Listen to me, Boscorelli. I don't want to see you again. I don't want to see you at work, I don't want to see you _outside_ of work. Stay out of my way. Understand?"

"Is it about the thing with Dougie?"

"_Ugh_. Boscorelli, you're clueless, you know that? Just totally" - spasm of crackling, wet coughs - "totally clueless."

Bosco punched the phone again. Then his mouth went off before he could stop it. "You've got somebody there with you. Don't you?"

Amazingly enough, that seemed to actually render her speechless.

"What?" she cried when she found her voice, almost sputtering. "What are you ... is that what you ...? Jesus! I've had it with you! I'm sick, I'm tired and I'm hanging up on you now, handsome."

_Click._

_Now what_, he thought after a moment, _was all _that_ about?_

_Well, it's simple_, he answered himself as Faith started towards him with their coffees. _Cruz used you that night, like a big ol' piece of Grade-A meat. Now she's dug in at her apartment with some new guy. The latest model. You see, you're not up to her standards, buddy, either as a cop or as a man. Cruz needs someone to support her in her endeavors, be it hot, hard animal sex or casual murder. See?_

"No," he said firmly under his breath. That just wasn't Cruz. It wasn't like her to skip work to spend two days in bed with some guy. He was paranoid. Keyed-up. Hell, he was still a bit worried over that little hiccup yesterday, that hallucination with the crow. It hadn't bothered him much at the time, but he'd _dreamed_ of that fucking bird last night, and though he couldn't remember the details, he suspected the dreams had been far from pleasant.

Faith handed him his coffee. "'No' what?"

"Nothin'."

He was aware of her staring at him, _studying_ him as they got back into the car. She really was starting to think there was something wrong with him, and she was watching him closely. Watching for _mistakes_. Like yesterday, when he'd let that guy wander out into traffic. She was keeping tabs. He didn't like that.

He didn't like that _at all_.

"How's the cold?" he said absently, just to change the subject. She really _was_ starting to look bad; dark bags under her eyes, waxy, pasty complexion, and he could almost see the swollen glands in her neck. Maybe she had the mumps. Wouldn't that be funny? He could get a few licks in on her if it turned out to be mumps; oh, look - little Faith has a kiddie disease. The idea brought with it a nostalgic ache. Something seemed to have died between them, that easy back-and-forth banter, and he wanted it back.

Faith shrugged and started absently rolling her newspaper into a cone. "Blah. My throat's full of razor-wire, and my nose is running off my face, but it's the kids I'm concerned about. It seems to have hit Charlie pretty hard. Like, flu rather than a head cold. He's been throwing up, diarrhea, the works. Emily, too."

Bosco nodded, no longer really paying attention, stirring his coffee listlessly. He'd lost Cruz. He'd lost her as a partner and he'd lost the possibility of getting something going with her. That was bad. What was worse was that he'd probably lost Anti-Crime as well. Cruz practically _was_ Anti-Crime, so he was screwed every which way. Every which way except the _good_ way. _Christ_. And just as he was starting to really enjoy it. _Fuck_. 

"Bosco."

He looked up, and with dull surprise he saw that Faith was angry. 

Faith was, in fact, _seething_. 

"When you ask a person how they are," she hissed. "I think you should at least _fake_ an interest in the response."

For a moment the two of them locked eyes, and suddenly there was that same urge, the one he'd had in the car yesterday - the urge to just reach out and slap her across the face. Maybe with that damn newspaper she was holding, just grab it away from her and smack her a good one with it. Goddammit, he so bitterly wished he'd let Cruz shoot Dougie. Would it really have been that big of a deal? What was the problem? Call it delayed self-defense. If he'd just taken a chance on that, he wouldn't be in this goddam miserable mess today. 

He didn't really know if that made any sense or not, but he was damn well sticking by it. 

Faith read most of this on his expression and her eyes narrowed. "Who were you on the phone with earlier?"

Bosco said nothing.

She nodded grimly. "Cruz. Wasn't it? What did she say?" She snorted. "God, do I even want to know?"

"Just ... just drop it, Faith."

"No, I will _not_ drop it!" she snapped. "This is getting _ridiculous_, you know that? You're obsessed with that bitch, and it's really starting to piss me off. Didn't _anything_ I said to you yesterday get through at all, or are you still just sitting back and letting your dick do all the thinking?"

He turned sharply. "Oh, are we a little _jealous_ now?"

Faith's expression didn't change, but the knuckles on the hand holding her newspaper turned white.

In front of them, the radio buzzed. Paramedics needed assistance with a combative patient. By the sound of things it wasn't really that urgent, but Five-Five David was the closest unit. In other words, them.

Without breaking eye-contact, Faith confirmed it. 

  
  


***

  
  


The ambulance was parked at the curb in front of a tenement block, lightbar flashing. A stretcher stood on the sidewalk next to the bus, its occupant unconscious and oblivious to the fact that he had become both the rope and the prize in a minor tug of war. 

On one side was a paramedic; Bosco recognized him as Monte "Doc" Parker. On the other side was a short, scrawny woman of about sixty, with a pug face and arms that appeared too long for her body. She was wearing a flimsy summer dress that kept catching the breeze, threatening to reveal things that were probably best left to history. 

Doc's partner, Carlos Nieto, came to meet them, looking agitated and uncharacteristically troubled.

"Sorry about this, guys." He gestured to the old woman. "Looks like more of this flu thing. We've been taking people in all morning with it. The lady over there calls us and says her husband can't breathe, so in we come, to the rescue. Except that_ now_ she won't let us take him to the hospital."

Faith shrugged. "Can't he stay here?"

Carlos shook his head and stifled a cough. "No way. Haven't you seen what this thing is like? The guy's in bad shape."

Faith looked at Bosco, who only shrugged and hung back. Let her try to make friends with the old bag, and if that failed then he'd step in. 

".... sixty-five years old!" the woman was shrieking as they approached, still playing her deadlocked tug-o-war with Doc. Bosco didn't believe for a second that Doc couldn't just pull the damn thing away from her, that they couldn't just load the poor old goat into the bus and be on their merry way. If the old woman wanted to come along, okay. If not, leave her yelling on the street and she'd soon get over it. If she didn't, _then_ the cops could haul her in. But of course Doc was too soft to do something like that, and so he had to go bothering the police.

"You brought us over here for _this?_" he whispered to Carlos as he passed. 

Carlos shrugged. "We're about at the end of our rope, okay? No patience for this kind of bullshit. The hospitals are all filling up, and they're threatening to just start turning us away."

"No shit?"

Carlos shook his head nervously. "No shit."

"Ma'am," Faith said, gently prying the woman's hand from the stretcher. "_Ma'am_. Take it easy. What's the problem?"

And damned if the old woman didn't start to actually _dance_ with fury. "They want to take my Len _awaaaaaaaaay_!"

"Ma'am," Faith repeated, looking uneasily at Len. Puffy-eyed and hollow-cheeked and sporting a hideously swollen neck, old Len already looked like he was well past his best-before date. "They're here to _help_ him. To do that they have to get him to the hospital as soon as possible. Okay?"

The old woman ignored her and leaned protectively over her unconscious husband. "There, now, honeycakes, Alli's here, don't worry. I won't let 'em take you." She looked balefully from Carlos to Doc and then over to Faith, jabbing a bony finger at each of them in turn. "_You_. _You_ did this to him."

Faith's eyebrows raised. "Excuse me?"

The old woman - Alli - laughed. "The _government_. The stinkin' _government_. Len worked hard for them for thirty-two goddamned years. IRS. Everyone hated him. Hated both of us. You know what it's like? Being married to an honest-to-god tax collector?"

Faith shook her head. 

"He was a good man," Alli said, and Bosco noted the tender, syrupy way the old woman looked down at her husband. He rolled his eyes; the old bag had Faith's number. "He was a good man, and everyone hated him. He gave so many years of his life working for those creeps, and look how they repay him!"

Faith shook her head. "I still don't understand, ma'am."

"He's sick! He's been getting sicker and sicker for three days now! I know what it is, too! The government!" She leaned in conspiratorially. "They can _make_ bugs. In labs. Then they have to test them on people. So they do it on their own employees! I know they do! Len retired ten years ago, when he was fifty-five. Early retirement. They lost one of their best accountants the day he walked out of there. So the bastards tested their bug on him, and now you goons want to take him to where they can run tests to see how well it worked!"

"I'm sure that's not true, ma'am," Faith said soberly.

"It's true," Alli said with grim certainty. She looked contemplatively up at Faith, who was almost a head taller. And then, incredibly, the old woman stuck out her tongue. It looked like a pinkish-white slug.

"I'm sick too," she said. "See? They gave it to me as well. Our son Lynn, he lives in Los Angeles. He phoned me and told me everything last night! He says they declared martial law across California! He says it's a plague, and the bastards are burning bodies and towing barges out to sea and dumping _more_ bodies and tryin' to cover it up! Captain Trips, they're calling it down there!"

"I'm sure that it would be on the news if-"

"No!" Alli said, grinning fiercely. "No! They sent in the Army to shut down all the papers and TV stations! Lynn said so!"

_Totally bugshit crazy,_ Bosco thought disgustedly. _And who the hell names their son "Lynn," for Christ's sake?_

Faith shrugged. "There's a virus going around, ma'am." Conveniently enough, she sneezed. "There, you see, _I_ have it. My kids have it. It's nothing to worry about, trust me. Just a nasty bug."

Alli sneered. "Of course _you'd_ say that."

"Can we get on with this?" Carlos snapped. 

Bosco nodded without turning. "I second that."

Faith favored each of them with a lethal glare, then smiled at Alli again. "I'm not the government, Alli. I'm just a working-class slob. Or maybe _slobbette_, eh? Eh? Heh ... yeah. Anyway, I can tell you with absolute certainty that if you and Len both go with Carlos and Doc here, they'll take you to the hospital to get checked out, and they'll help get Len back on his feet. That's all." 

Alli looked doubtfully at Faith. Bosco sighed impatiently, shifting from foot to foot, and something a few blocks down caught his eye. Something was going on down there, something a bit strange, maybe even a bit creepy in light of what the old crone was raving about, but-

"Hey!"

Bosco turned to see Alli jabbing the death-finger at him. "What?"

"What are _you_ supposed to be, Chunky? The muscle? In case this one doesn't break me with her charm alone?"

Bosco's brow clouded. "_Chunky_? Who the hell are you callin' Chunky?"

But apparently he was only a passing interest to the old woman, and she turned back to Faith. "I don't like you," Alli said flatly. She laughed, and it touched off a minor coughing fit. "But I guess I'll go. Hell, I s'pose there isn't a lot worse they can do to us, is there?"

They loaded Len into the back of the bus, Carlos taking up position on his right. Alli climbed up and sat down beside her husband on the opposite side, her back proudly straight and eyes forward. Doc slammed the back doors.

"Sorry about that," he said to Faith. "She'll definitely need a psyche consult when she gets to the hospital. I really appreciate the help. I didn't want to have to ... you know ... make a scene ..."

_Too late_, Bosco thought acridly. 

"No problem," Faith said. 

"Take care of yourselves," he said, getting into the bus and firing off one good, juicy sneeze. "Thanks again."

"No problem," Faith repeated, and started back for the cruiser.

Bosco fell into step beside her. "Chunky? I'm not chunky."

Faith smiled tightly. "Did she shatter your fragile self-esteem, Bos?"

"No. And that was a big waste of time."

Faith snorted. "Yeah, I convinced an old woman to go to the hospital where she can get some help. That was a _real_ waste of time, all right."

"Whatever."

"So what do you think?" she said when they were rolling again. 

"About what?"

"All that stuff about her son in Los Angeles. Martial law. What was the other thing she said? Bodies being dumped, the papers being shut down ..."

He glanced over at her, scowling. "What? You're _worried_ about that? That woman was _nuts_, Faith." He grunted. "IRS man. Shit. Couldn't happen to a more deserving guy."

Faith shook her head. "I'm gettin' a little worried here, Bosco." She chuckled nervously. "I mean, Carlos wasn't even being an asshole. That's gotta mean something."

Bosco sneered. "Who the hell looks down at a baby boy and calls him Lynn? Can you imagine what that poor bastard must've gone through in school? You call a kid something like that and you might as well pay for the karate lessons in advance."

"Bosco, would you listen to me? I'm _serious_, here. I'm _worried_. About my kids, especially." She paused. "Bosco, what if it's ... like .... bioterrorism?"

Bosco groaned. "Aww, not that again! Look, you want my opinion? The government has seriously overrated the capability of a bunch of skinny little bastards hidin' in caves. A bunch of _religious nuts_, Faith, hidin' in caves like rats. That's supposed to be a threat? Come on."

"Mmm."

"Look, if you like we can swing by your place and check in on Fred and the kids." He grinned. "There's nothing to worry about, though. Look at me. That guy sneezed right in my face yesterday, and do I look sick?"

Faith smiled faintly. "Feel like a million, baby?"

Bosco grinned. "Feel like a million, baby."

She started to say something else and began to cough, a cough that very quickly turned into a series of long, whooping barks. She put her head between her knees and groped her pockets for a Kleenex.

Bosco slapped her companionably on the back. "All right there?"

She nodded, gradually getting it under control. "Mmm ... fine ... no problem."

"Maybe you should take the rest of the day off."

Faith frowned theatrically. "Are you kidding? While the great and mighty Sergeant Cruz is off sick as well? What would happen to New York without at least _one_ of us out there to kick ass and take names?"

Bosco's face darkened and he started to protest. Then he realized that there had been no real sarcasm in her tone, no real trace of that underlying bite of disapproval or criticism. It had been an honest, innocent and - most important of all - totally unconscious joke. 

And suddenly it at least _felt_ like everything was right between them again. Just like that. No fanfare, no pyrotechnics. No big deal. He smiled. 

Then he remembered what he'd seen earlier while Faith had been trying to calm the crazy old woman. That strange little thing going on a few blocks down that he'd almost - but not quite - been able to dismiss, just before the little hag had called him Chunky. He decided he didn't need to tell Faith about it. It'd only kill the mood, which for the first time in days - the first time in over a _week_, in fact - seemed free of tension. And it was probably nothing but simple coincidence.

No sir, she didn't need to know about the three Army vehicles - two jeeps and an Armored Personnel Carrier - that he'd seen crawling along with slow, plodding determination.

  
  


***

The bar seemed crowded enough. Men stood around in pastel suits, acid-washed jeans, red leather jackets like the one Michael Jackson wore during his Thriller phase. Women sported spritzed hair, Doc Martens, leg-warmers, phony punk mohawks. "The Safety Dance" by Men Without Hats was being piped out at what seemed like an impossible volume, making it absolutely impossible to think. 

"Retro Eighties Night!" Rose Boscorelli cried merrily when she saw her son pull up a stool at the bar. She was busy madly mixing drinks, but it didn't seem to distract her from talking to him. "How ya doin'!?"

"Fine, Ma!" he yelled over the music.

"Not workin'!?"

"Took off early!"

"Whatcha drinkin'!?"

"Just a beer!" 

Rose somehow managed to keep mixing the drink she'd been working on when he came in and get him a beer at the same time. In a glass, no less. Bosco grinned. He didn't even really want it, but as always, if his mother gave him something, he felt it was his duty to take it and like it.

"How are _you_ doin', Ma!?"

"What's it look like!?" she cried, not unkindly. "Great!"

"No, I mean, how are you feeling? Like, are you sick?"

Rose looked at him as if he'd just asked if she was pregnant. "No! No, I'm not sick! Nice of you to ask, though!" She seemed to think a moment. "Bit of a sore throat, now that you mention it!"

_Oh we can dance, we can dance ..._

_Jesus, I can't hear anything over that stupid fucking song._

__"What!? Didn't hear you!"

"I said, _I have a bit of a sore throat!_"

Bosco suddenly felt as if he'd been punched in the stomach. 

"How's the crowd!?" he said after a moment.

"What!?"

"I said, _how's the crowd tonight!?_"

Rose shrugged. "Not bad! But not as good as we usually get! When we started this Retro thing, it really took off!" Another bartender came over, got her attention and said something inaudible. She turned back and shrugged. "'Scuse me a minute, will you!?"

Bosco nodded and swung around on his stool to take another look at the crowd. 

"_Oh, we-can-dance ..._ _We-can-dance ..._"

_Everybody pull down your pants_, Bosco thought with a wan smile. _Or so we used to sing it in school. Shit, these people all look healthy enough. Has to be all a big coincidence. _

After the Alli thing, he'd taken Faith around to her apartment to find fourteen-year-old Emily Yokas basically in charge. Fred and Charlie had slept almost all of the day away and were still sawing wood. It was quite a cute picture, and Bosco had to admit it had made even him a bit teary; Fred, curled into a fetal position, cradled Charlie in his arms, the pair of them out like lights. Emily claimed to actually be feeling a bit better, and was catering to their every demand during the brief periods when they were awake. Bosco thought the kid had done pretty well for a girl who'd nearly died of a drug-overdose only a few weeks before, and it was obvious that she quite enjoyed playing Little Mommy.

But Faith had been horrified. She needed to be home with them, she'd said. So they'd both knocked off early, which hadn't exactly scored them too many points with the lieutenant, who'd been quite pissed off and hadn't bothered to hide it. Enough people were out sick as it was.

Bosco had intended to just go home for an early night, and instead found himself here. Trying to see if this sickness really was so widespread. 

And, he reminded himself, to check on his mother.

His eye was drawn suddenly to a tall, bronze-skinned woman with shoulder-length jet-black hair. She stood near one of the fire-exits, chatting it up with two men. His guts loosened sickeningly. 

_Jesus Christ, it's Cruz._

But of course it wasn't. She turned to face him and she was just an attractive Hispanic woman who was about Cruz' height and build, with the same hairstyle and the same liquid grace. 

_And also, _he thought with a wry smirk._ I'd say that Cruz wouldn't be caught dead in a leather jacket, black stockings and pink tutu combination. _

The Cruz look-alike sneezed violently, and Bosco's smile faded abruptly. 

_Wouldn't be caught dead._

_Wouldn't be caught dead in a plague-pit._

_Christ, what the hell is wrong with you? Faith's paranoia starting to rub off? It's _nothing_. Just like she told the crazy old bag. Just a nasty virus. That's all. Don't let it get to you._

He shook his head and turned back to the bar, finding he didn't really want to look at the crowd anymore. He didn't want to _see_ any more. No more coughing, no more sneezing. 

"The Safety Dance" ended and Billy Idol's "White Wedding" took its place, the volume seeming to go down a notch or two in the change. 

"I told them to turn it down a bit," Rose said when she came back over. "You get too over the top with the music and you kill the atmosphere, y'know."

Bosco nodded absently. "Ma ... you been seeing anything strange ... like ... I dunno ... Army activity? Soldiers?"

Rose wrinkled her nose. "You're asking some really odd questions tonight, Maurice. What's up?"

He swallowed and looked down into his beer. "Just a bit worried."

"About what? This flu thing?"

He looked up sharply. "What have you heard?"

"Nothing, really. Some four-star general was on the news earlier saying there was nothing to worry about." Rose suddenly screwed her face into a comical approximation of a grizzled old Army warhorse. 

"'I don't know how many ways I can say it,'" she said in a gruff general's voice. "'There is no such thing as the so-called _superflu_.' That's what he kept saying. Over and over." She frowned. "Why? What have _you_ heard?"

He smiled thinly. "Like you said: nothing, really. Look, are you sure you haven't seen anything weird?"

"No." She winked. "But if they show up, the doors are wide open here. I mean, soldiers and bars. Good mix. Good business." She shrugged. "But look, there's nothing gonna happen. Okay?"

Bosco nodded and stood up. "Yeah. Guess so."

"Where you going? It's not even nine o'clock yet!"

"Long day. I'm beat."

Rose shrugged. "Your loss."

Bosco started for the door, and about halfway across the dance floor, he turned. His mother was now flamboyantly pouring two glasses at once to the enthusiastic hoots and cheers of the customers. 

And to his surprise he felt his chest tighten and his eyes start to burn, something that was a little scary. Christ, Faith really _had_ gotten under his skin with all that doom and gloom shit this afternoon. At that point he had no idea what kind of horrors fate had planned for the following day, and Bosco decided to allow himself a little sentimental indulgence. Just this one night. 

He waited until Rose had poured the drinks and went back over.

Then he leaned forward and hugged her as best he could with the bar between them. 

"Love ya, Ma," he whispered hoarsely. And then, though he didn't quite no why, he added, "Be careful, huh?"

He left hastily then, leaving Rose to watch after him, a bewildered and utterly sweet smile spreading lazily on her face. 

He would never see her alive again. 


	4. Chapter 4 June 25 Day 4

WHEW!

As always, the feedback has been much appreciated! :) Chapter 4 is finally finished after much tweaking, and I _think_ everything is consistent. The true nature of the epidemic is becoming clear; Davis, Sully, Kim and Alex are planning something ...

I think I said in an earlier chapter intro that there were eight or nine chapters left to go. That was a mistake; there are going to be eight or nine chapters _in all_, when the story's done. So basically, we're still only at the halfway point right now ...

I'm starting to get ideas for a proper title now, so by Chapter 5 or 6 "Immunity" will likely change ...

Warning: character deaths dead ahead. 

* * *

  
  
  
  
  
  


******Chapter 4**

June 25

Day 4

  
  
  
  


The troops landed at the 55th Precinct sometime during the night. About twenty armed soldiers - all wearing portable respirators with self-contained oxygen supplies - were posted to the house, and according to all the official lines, they were National Guard and were only there to assist and cooperate with the police. 

If these guys were National Guard, then Maurice Boscorelli would happily invite them to address him as Queen Priscilla of the Vast Red Desert. They were regular army to a man, and it was obvious they were only here to keep an _eye_ on the police. 

Not that it was any surprise at this point, not to Bosco. After his trip to the bar the previous evening, he'd spent an hour or so watching the news on several different networks. ABC and NBC were off the air completely; black screen and dead air. CBC, CNN, and CNN Headline News, however, were all on, and it wasn't long before Bosco became much less interested in the news (which was the usual depressing, innocuous fodder) and much more interested in the newsreaders themselves. 

The anchors all had a nervous, furtive look about them that Bosco guessed most people might miss. Someone in his line of work, however, would probably recognize it immediately. It was a look he'd seen countless times and had become all too grimly familiar with. A look that, Bosco supposed, he'd worn himself on more than a few occasions. 

The newsreaders were all quite obviously being held at gunpoint. 

That wasn't to say the flu didn't receive any attention at all; it did. But it was far from the top story. The flu, the anchors all insisted with shifty-eyed, forced nonchalance, was a "minor outbreak." The National Guard had indeed been mobilized in several areas, but there was nothing to be alarmed about. Indeed, there were already several vicious rumors - _vicious_, _nasty_ and _totally unfounded_ rumors - that the flu was some kind of biological weapon unleashed not by terrorists, but by the U.S. Government itself.

At approximately nine-thirty-six PM, a CBC fill-in anchor - a youngish fellow named Patrick Hill - had finally snapped. There he was, reading the non-flu news like a good little boy, and suddenly Bosco didn't have to wonder anymore about what was really going on.

"... Lloyd Henreid was arrested by the Arizona State Police outside a rest-stop in the small village of Burrack," Hill said, reading from a paper in front of him and shifting his eyes to a point somewhere to the left of the camera. "His partner, Andrew 'Poke' Freeman, was shot and killed by ... by ..." 

Hill broke off and sneezed. Hill didn't look too good to begin with, and after the sneeze his brow furrowed. It seemed that in that moment Patrick Hill decided he had nothing to lose. He then looked _directly_ at that mysterious point somewhere to the left of the camera and said, very clearly: "What are you gonna do? Huh? Are you gonna shoot me on the air, you son of a bitch? Are you gonna-"

The picture immediately scrambled, then turned to snow. There might have been a muffled gunshot just before it did, though Bosco admitted to himself later that it was probably only his imagination. He'd waited another twenty minutes, but the network never came back on.

With eerie, preternatural calm, he had gone to bed at ten o'clock. And oddly enough, he had slept like the dead.

He stayed in bed until eleven o'clock, and at around noon he decided to risk turning the TV on again. A number of channels were off, though some would come back on in short, sporadic bursts. What he did manage to get was a perfectly ordinary offering of mundane crap; game shows, cooking shows, kids' shows. Nothing but fabulous prizes, fantastic recipes, and fucking dancing puppets. 

But on the way to work, he passed several military jeeps, two Hummers, and a large canvas-covered truck. He also saw several soldiers on the streets who appeared to be on sentry duty. The sentries and the soldiers visible in the jeeps were all wearing respirators identical to the ones worn by the so-called Guardsmen who were currently crawling all over the Five-Five. 

Beyond the soldiers, though, he found the house almost totally deserted. So many cops were off sick now that it was basically just a haphazard mix of people from every Watch; anyone still healthy enough to make it in had been urged to do so, though mostly by informal calls from colleagues. 

The result was a confused and disorganized mess, and nobody really seemed to know what they were doing. Lieutenant Swersky was nowhere to be found, and there didn't seem to be anyone of significant rank. Nobody took roll-call. Cops came and went seemingly of their own volition, all of them sneezing and coughing. The soldiers studiously ignored everything and didn't make the slightest effort to help.

Things were bad, yes, but it couldn't be helped. The best Bosco could do now was simply put on his uniform, take a squad car, go out and do whatever he could. It was becoming more and more clear that he was the only one here who was healthy, the only one not showing symptoms, and with that came a sense of added responsibility. He was worried, oh yes, but that would just have to wait. His mother, Faith, Cruz, his friends ... they would all have to wait because duty still called. Right now he had to make himself useful.

If for no other reason than to just keep himself calm. 

He grabbed a pack of Big Red from his desk _(gum, yes, gum, that's nice and normal and comforting_), wondering where Davis and Sullivan were. He hadn't seen them, but if they were around maybe he could hook up with them, make a trio. Or he might simply grab one of the cops running around loose and press them into service as a temporary partner-

"Bosco."

Or maybe he wouldn't have to.

He turned, and his eyes widened.

"Faith," he breathed when he found his voice. "Jesus, Faith, you look terrible."

"Sensitive to the bitter end, eh, Bosco?" she said hoarsely.

_Terrible_ was an understatement; Faith looked positively _gruesome_. Her eyes were not just puffy but seemed swollen almost to slits, her complexion somewhere between fishbelly white and charcoal gray. Veins stood out prominently on her cheeks and neck, and it was her neck that was the worst; it had distended visibly and almost freakishly, to the point where it was nearly as wide as her head. 

_Why not?_ he thought bitterly. _They're calling this goddam thing "Tube Neck" for a reason_.

He shook his head helplessly. "Why ... why would you come in like this, Faith? You shouldn't be here. You should be at home with your family."

She smiled thinly. "Fred's handling things at home. I think ... I dunno, I think he might be getting better, Bos. He was bad last night, absolutely burning up, delirious, but this morning he seemed better. He even ate breakfast." She nodded, and he thought it was more to reassure herself than him. "I'm okay for today, at least. I think I might have a chance at nailing this thing, but I need to keep busy."

He looked at her doubtfully. "You seen Davis? Sully? Swersky. Anybody?"

"I got a call from Davis. That's why I'm here. He and Sully are down in front of the Brownstone Laundromat. Kim and Alex are there with them, and they want us to meet them."

"Why?"

"I don't know. But they want to meet there because the whole area's pretty quiet. Things are bad most other places. Looting, 'bangers running around with MAC-10s, I don't know what all." She swallowed hard, and winced at the pain it obviously caused. "Bosco, I've heard that at least 80% of the _entire_ NYPD is down with this thing now. Maybe more."

"No way. Can't be."

Her runny eyes shifted to a soldier who was standing a few paces behind them. The soldier was inching casually in their direction and trying to look nonchalant about it. Under other circumstances it might have been comic.

She took Bosco's arm and led him out of the office area, then down past the unmanned reception desk. "Yeah, well, at any rate Davis and Sully want us to come help out with whatever it is they're doing."

"You have no idea at all what Davis wants?"

"No. But he called me on my cell-phone instead of the box."

"Why?"

Faith glanced at him, and there was actually some wry humor in her expression. In that moment Bosco had no idea that he was seeing the old Faith Yokas for the last time in either of their lives. Sardonic and perpetually exasperated Faith, partnered with an impulsive, chauvinistic bonehead and in some perverse way loving every minute of it. "Why do you _think_, Bos?"

_Because the Army will be monitoring the police band. Jesus._

_And of course, they might also be listening in on the cell-phones, as well._

He stopped and put both hands up. "Whoa, hang on a second, Faith. You think Davis and Sullivan want to do something that'll put us up against the U.S. _Army_?"

"I don't _know_, Bosco," she said irritably. "The only way we're gonna know is if we go down there, isn't it? If you want to stand here and debate it, do it with yourself. I'm going even if I have to go alone." She started walking again, then turned to him. "_Am_ I going alone?"

Bosco looked doubtfully at one of the soldiers, who stood impassive and unreadable in his respirator mask, M4 assault rifle held across his chest. These guys were not fucking around, that much was clear. And they obviously wanted to keep a lid on how bad this thing really was.

The question was, to what extent would they go to keep that lid screwed down?

The more pressing question was, how bad _was_ this thing?

Faith seemed to decide that no answer was forthcoming from him. She shook her head and started for the parking lot on her own.

After a moment, Bosco wordlessly fell into step beside her.

***

  
  


The man was in his early twenties and not much more than five feet tall, wearing khaki shorts, combat boots, a dirty brown trenchcoat and nothing else. He was walking briskly along the street with a stout, gnarled walking stick almost twice his height, grinning merrily.

"Heeeeeeeey MARY!" this nut-job was chanting at the top of his lungs. "Whatchoo gonna call that BAY-BEE? For the Christ-child will be born again! The time of the Rapture is almost upon us! Somewhere He awaits birth, and we await His return, praise the Lord, we sure do! Heeeeeeeey MARY! Whatchoo gonna call that BAY-BEE!?"

_There's always one_, Bosco thought dismally. _There always has to be at least one of these freaks. I'm surprised it's taken this long to see one_.

The Reverend (as Bosco christened him almost immediately) would punctuate every _Mary_ and every _Bay-bee_ by bringing his walking stick down on the sidewalk in one or two quick, crisp beats. 

"Heeeeeeey MARY!"

_Clak!_

"Whatchoo gonna call that BAY-BEE!?"

_Clak-clak!_

The Reverend saw them, grinned, raised his walking stick in salute, sneezed, and returned to his mixed song/sermon down the street. 

Faith, leaning against the door with her eyes closed and a hand across her brow to shield the sun, sensed the car slowing down. "What are you doing?"

"Pickin' that guy up," Bosco said tersely. "What do you think?"

"For God's sake, _why?_"

He looked at her incredulously. "Let him run around spewing that shit at a time like this?"

"Why not?"

"Oh, I dunno. How about _inciting_ _panic_, Faith?"

She sneezed wetly and blew her nose into a wadded clump of about four tissues. "Oh, gimme a break, Bosco. Let him go. We're past him now anyway."

"I'm gonna go around the block."

"No, you are _not_. Davis and Sullivan are waiting on us. We're not stopping for anything."

He raised an eyebrow. "Anything? What if we see looting? What if we see 'bangers waging bloody turf-wars in the streets? I seem to recall somebody telling me such things are going on. Not that we've seen any of it yet ..."

"And that bothers you? Look, we're not stopping unless it looks like there's something we can do. Something _useful_." After a moment, she put her head against the window again and said softly, "I don't think I'm in such good shape here after all, Bos. Christ, I can barely _breathe_."

Bosco swallowed hard and ignored that. He didn'twant to hear that kind of talk. That might be a little harsh, yes, maybe a bit unkind, yes, but he was sticking by it. Some part of him realized - right now, at least - that he was cruising along in the grip of low-key denial. 

_Cruising. _

_Cruz. _

_Oh, no. Not goin' there, not right now. Put it away and think about it later._

He saw something ahead and pointed. "How about them? Should we stop for them?"

Faith lifted her head. There was another NYPD squad car up ahead, parked haphazardly in the middle of the street. Two cops - one male and one female - were sitting on the ground next to it, their backs up against the passenger side. As Bosco neared, he saw that they were passing a cigarette back and forth between them and appeared to be enjoying the burning wreck of an '89 Dodge that was sitting across the street. 

The two fire-watchers both looked up as Bosco pulled alongside. The male cop was heavyset, balding and was probably somewhere in his forties, while the female cop was very young, almost comically doe-eyed, and certainly not long out of training. The classic team; the grizzled veteran showing the ropes to a wet-behind-the-ears novice.

"You guys all right?" Bosco asked, getting out of the car and glancing doubtfully at the burning wreck across the street. He was marginally aware that Faith had remained in the cruiser.

The male cop looked up blandly. "Fine. Fine."

Bosco peered at them, trying to see the number on their collars. "You guys are ..."

"From the eighty-seventh," the female cop said. She gestured at the burning car. "And don't bother to ask about that. We called it in. They said Fire was on its way, but that was almost forty-five minutes ago and nobody's shown up yet."

"What are you doin' here?"

"We're on the run," the male cop said with a thin smile. "My name's Dolan, by the way. Bert Dolan. This fine young rookie here is Pattie Wells."

Bosco smiled uneasily at her. He guessed that once, not so long ago, Wells had been extremely pretty. Maybe even a real head-turner, on a level worthy of oh, say, a certain dark-eyed Anti-Crime sergeant he was trying very hard not to think about right now. 

But Pattie Wells' pretty days were behind her. Pattie Wells was hurtin'. Pattie Wells and Bert Dolan each had themselves a fine old case of Tube Neck, or Captain Trips, or superflu, or whatever the hell you wanted to call it. The fact that they were sharing a cigarette while Faith could barely breathe struck him as vaguely obscene.

"On the run?" Bosco asked. "From what?"

Dolan shrugged with bizarre indifference. "We're screwed, my friend. You want to talk about being _outgunned_? We saw what the word 'outgunned' means. Hell, it's not that hard for our friendly neighborhood homeboys to get their grimy little paws on military hardware at this point; we already saw a couple of 'bangers with Army-issue assault rifles. But here, now, it's pretty quiet here in your neck of the woods. You're lucky. So far, anyway."

Bosco found his eye drawn back again and again to a small smear of what looked like powered sugar on Dolan's shirt, just under his badge. It made him hate the man a little. "So you guys just cut and run?"

"Don't get all pissy, kid," Dolan said without rancor. "We didn't have a chance. The Russians and the Triads are blowing the holy hell out of each other in our precinct. Half of 'em are all but falling down with this disease, but that doesn't stop 'em. It's fuckin' _biblical_. I think the Russians are winning, too. When Chevchencko got taken out, all it did was piss them off.

"Besides, you take your chances pretty much anywhere you go right now. I heard the Army shot a bunch of civilians at a guard-post near the Lincoln tunnel. Machine-gunned them. No warning at all."

"Bullshit," Bosco said simply.

Dolan shrugged. "Maybe. But that's nothing compared to what Pattie here saw." He put a hand on the young woman's shoulder. "Wanna tell him?"

Wells looked at Bosco with an expression that was, oddly enough, almost insolent. "You know what burning flesh smells like?"

She was smiling slightly as she said it, and Bosco felt a chill. He nodded wordlessly.

Wells shook her head. "Not like this, you don't. They're burning bodies. The Army, I mean. In Brooklyn, probably other places too. They're bringing them in by the truckload from the hospitals. Bonfires, factory incinerators, everywhere they can. I've seen it. Arms and legs sticking out every which way." She held his gaze, and her smile never wavered. "They use pitchforks. To get them out of the trucks, I mean."

"They actually think they can keep something like that under wraps," Dolan snorted. "Can you believe that? Maybe they can, too, with so many people stuck in their homes. Pattie and I are gonna catch our breaths and then we're gonna go and try to snap a few pictures."

Bosco now found himself feeling rather lightheaded. Big dream? Yes, it had to be. Big dream. This was a big ol' bad dream. He never got out of bed this morning, that was it. Nightmare. Of course it was. All that shit from yesterday, Alli ... and then Faith ... and then the bar ... and then watching the news ...

"Why the hell would you do that?" he heard himself ask. The stench from the burning car was making him nauseous. Come to think if it, the smell wasn't much better than burning flesh, and that thought only made him sicker.

Wells shrugged. "People have a right to know. They can't cover this up forever."

"Where are you two headed?" Dolan asked mildly.

Bosco looked back at the cruiser. Faith was still leaning against the door and now appeared to be sleeping. 

That ... or she was unconscious. 

Or ...

He cut the thought off, suddenly wanting to get away from Dolan and Wells. Dolan and Wells, the Fire-Watchers. Both so deep in shock they didn't even seem to realize it. Creepy. Just too damned creepy, the both of them. 

"Just going to meet some friends," he said.

"Yeah? Want us to come along?"

"No!" Bosco said, perhaps too sharply. "Uh, no, we can handle it."

Both Dolan and Wells shrugged, neither appearing terribly disappointed. Wells looked down at the cigarette, now smoked almost down past the filter, and flicked it aside.

There was an endless, awkward moment where the only sound was the crackle of flames from the burning car.

"Better get going," Bosco said with a forced smile, and started back for the cruiser. 

"My boyfriend died last night," Wells called after him for some damned reason. There was no emotion in her voice at all. "I woke up this morning and he was dead next to me."

_Now why_, he thought, feeling a hot spike of anger rise up in his chest to join the terror that was already there. _Would she think I wanted to _know_ that?_

Bosco started to ask her, then thought better of it. Instead he pretended not to hear and got back into the car. He looked over at Faith and swallowed hard; she was breathing, but it was broken and uneven and he could hear the dank rattle deep in her chest. Tentatively, he reached out and touched her shoulder. 

"I called that fire in," she said drowsily, without opening her eyes. "You know what I got? Dead air."

"What?"

Faith groaned and took hold of the radio handset on her shoulder. "Five-Five David to Central," she said rustily. "Central, respond please."

She then held the radio under his nose, as if for his inspection. 

There was nothing from the Five-Five. No response at all.

"We have a fire here," Faith said into the radio. "Please send a fire truck or two if it's convenient. We could also use some pizza. And beer. Make sure to send some beer." She turned to him. "See?"

He saw, all right. Over the dashboard, he saw the Fire-Watchers. They were still staring at him with their spooky, empty eyes. 

At last - thankfully - Dolan began to cough, and Wells started clapping him on the back.

With their attention finally drawn away from him, Bosco threw the car in gear and resumed course.

  
  


***

  
  


"There they are."

"I see them."

Bosco parked the cruiser opposite Davis and Sully's and turned to Faith. "You okay?"

She nodded. "Mmm."

"You gonna stay in the car?" A note of mild accusation crept into his tone seemingly on its own, and he hated himself for it. But coming here had been her idea.

"No," she murmured. She took a deep breath and ran her hands over her face. "No, I'm okay. Let's go."

Bosco stepped out of the car and surveyed the scene, glancing at the ambulance parked directly behind Davis and Sully's cruiser. Kim Zambrano sat on the ground next to it, leaning up against the front tire in a way that made him think of the Fire-Watchers. Kim's head was down, her knees pulled up under her chin, and she was visibly trembling. Alex Taylor was kneeling beside her, a hand on Kim's shoulder. Alex seemed to be comforting her, talking to her, giving her the occasional encouraging pat. 

"Fine day to be alive, isn't it?" Ty Davis said dryly as he met them. His complexion, usually a light coffee color, was now the color of ash, and his eyes were discolored and baggy. His throat was only moderately swollen, however, and overall Bosco didn't think the superflu had done as bad a number on him as it had on everybody else. 

Sully was a different story. Almost visibly collapsing in on himself, he was holding a ragged handkerchief which he kept coughing into, and Bosco noted grimly that it was spotted with what was undoubtedly blood. 

"So what's up?" Bosco asked. Once out, it sounded magnificently stupid.

Davis gestured to Alex. "Ask her."

The two paramedics joined them, and Alex handed Bosco a tattered and much-folded piece of paper.

"That's a happy little fact sheet a couple of ER docs put together," she said. "Everything they could figure about this disease."

Bosco scanned the paper. It had been typed hastily and was full of spelling errors and simple, point-form language. He had no interest in reading the whole thing, but his eye picked out random bits:

_Susceptibility may run high as 90%. Probably more. _

_Government has repeatedly promised a vaccine. No doctor is currently aware of any plans to distribute such a vaccine. No doctor has been contacted by any government official. General consensus is that a vaccine would be almost impossible to produce anyway, as this particular virus mutates almost constantly. This is the same reason it is so deadly._

_Since morning of June 24, all hospitals have become overloaded to point where patients are being left on floors and on tables in cafeteria. Many dead. Dead are being removed in trucks, but many still remain and more patients arrive constantly. Rate of new arrivals here is currently about twenty per hour. Bodies will become a health risk, and we DO NOT need another at this point_.

And then Bosco saw the final line. It was not _technically_ the final line, actually; there was some other inconsequential material after it. But it was the line that said all that needed to be said, it was the final _word_ if not the final _line_, and Bosco felt that same lightheadedness again, that same sense of titanic unreality. This could not be real.

Could _not_ be.

It was in the same small, sensible typeface as everything else, unremarkable and undramatic: __

_Superflu mortality rate is 100%._

He looked up at them. Ty. Sully. Alex. Kim. _Faith_. He suddenly had a compelling urge to run away from these people, to turn and run and not look back. For the first time the reality came home to him that he was the only person he knew not suffering from this thing. He was clean, free and healthy. No-one said it, and no one needed to say it. The eyes, the empty, sallow, _accusing_ eyes were all watching him, and in that moment he knew exactly how those GI's had felt when they threw open the gates of the camps after World War II, those healthy and robust and well-fed GI's, looking at all those scrawny bodies, skeletal faces, bulbous eyes.

His expression stayed perfectly bland as all of this went through his head.

"So what's the point?" he said tightly, handing the paper to Faith.

Ty shrugged and put his hand on Alex's shoulder, almost tenderly. Bosco knew that once, not too long ago, the two of them had something going. Did they still? Did they again? 

Did it matter? 

"The bus has a public address system in it," Ty said, pointing to the ambulance. "We want to get the message out to as many people as we can."

Despite his shock, Bosco couldn't help sneering at that. "_Message_? What _message_? 'Abandon all hope?'"

"I think people have a right to know, man," Ty said softly. "At this point I don't really think we have a lot to lose."

_Speak for yourselves_, Bosco thought bitterly.

Out loud he said: "No. It's stupid, it's pointless, and it won't do anything but make a bad situation worse. We're not doin' it."

Kim, silent to this point, stepped forward. She studied Bosco for a moment with almost detached curiosity. Then her hand abruptly shot out and grabbed a wad of his shirt. She pulled him forward and thrust her face into his until their foreheads were almost touching. 

"My son died this morning," she whispered hoarsely. "My little Joey ... he died this morning ... so you ... so you _listen_, you arrogant son of a bitch! We're doing this! _I have to do this!_ Because my son ... my little son ... my little _Joeeeeeey_-" 

Kim let go of Bosco's shirt, dropped to her knees, and began to sob. Except that wasn't even really quite right; she began to _bray_. On each intake of breath she produced a loud, whooping cry and on each exhale the cries became coughs. Alex dropped to one knee beside her and held her. Kim clung to her immediately, grabbing a swatch of Alex's shirt and kneading it compulsively, weeping her son's name over and over.

Bosco watched this, his face working through an odd and undefinable series of expressions. He realized with something like dismay that even now they were still seeing him as they always did; angry, stubborn and obnoxious. It was kind of ironic. What he was above all else right now was confused. 

And scared half out of his mind. 

Sully spoke, his voice clotted and thick. "This is the plan: the bus rolls along, we each take a flank and keep 'em safe ... " He raised the handkerchief to his mouth, coughed violently into it, and looked at them over his hand. "You in or not?"

Bosco shook his head and opened his mouth to tell them absolutely not-

"We're in," Faith said. She met Bosco's eyes and held his gaze hard and steady. "We're _in_."

Sully coughed again and spat a thick mix of blood and phlegm onto the pavement. "Damn right. We're not gonna let these bastards bury this thing."

"Okay then!" Alex said sharply, standing up and gently drawing Kim up with her. "Can we just do this thing, please?"

Bosco took a long, deep breath and shook his head again. This - whatever this was - it was stupid and it was pointless and it was utterly, utterly crazy.

Five minutes later they were rolling. Davis and Sullivan, Five-Five Charlie, were on the right. Bosco and Yokas, Five-Five David, took the left. Kim Zambrano, only a moment ago barely able to speak, seemed to find her voice. Through the bus' PA system, she told the people of New York about the bogus claims of a vaccine, the overloaded hospitals, the disposal operations. 

Bosco noted that she did not, however, mention that other little fun fact: one hundred percent mortality rate. 

_Shit, _he thought sourly._ So much for "right to know." Dolan said that, too, didn't he? He and that partner of his, that kid who barely looked old enough to drink, they were going down to _take pictures_ of these supposed disposal operations. Because people have a "right to know." And the Army's putting the screws to the media because they _don't_ think people should know. Christ. In a mess like this, I don't really think what you know or don't know matters a whole lot. _

In the bus Kim switched microphone duty with Alex. Bosco looked at his watch; they'd been at it fifteen minutes already. And already it was starting to grate on his nerves. __

__"This is nuts," he murmured. "And why the hell does an ambulance even need a public address system installed, anyway? God, if they want to do this so bad, why not just let Sully and Davis do it? Why do they even need us? Huh? Faith? ... Faith?" __

__But Faith appeared to be asleep.__

__A few minutes later he heard the helicopter. He craned his neck forward and caught just a glimpse of it as it disappeared behind a building. Military? You bet your sweet ass. Doing a little recon? You bet your sweet ass. Who the hell else would be up there today?

Next to him, Faith stirred. "Bosco?"

"Yeah?"

"After this ... whenever we're done ... can you take me home?"

"Absolutely," he said. "It was a mistake for you to even try to come in today, Faith. When we're done." He grunted. "And how _do_ we know when we're done, Faith? What's the sign we look for? Riots? When we've got everybody runnin' around screamin' _hey-Mary-whatchoo-gonna-call-that-baby?_"

"Bosco, look around ... most people are too sick to ... to even come out ... There are people at home who will never get out of their beds again ... they have a right to know ..."

"Christ, Faith, don't say it! I don't want to hear that again!" He slammed his palm against the steering wheel. "Goddam it, there are better things we could be doing! We oughtta be out there trying to help get this situation under control! Calm people down, not be out here winding 'em up!"

Faith sighed. "Don't ... just ... just _don't_, okay? This is mainly for Kim, I think. Something she needs to do ... And when she tires herself out, I want you to take me home so I can be with my husband and my children." 

Then, very softly, she said, "I ... I dunno ... I think maybe I'm dying here, Bosco."

He bristled at that, but inside he felt another needling jab of deep, black terror. "Jesus, Faith, don't say that! You don't know that! You're tough, you can beat this thing, I know-"

"Just shut up, Bos," she murmured, though not unkindly. "Just shut up."

Bosco shrugged helplessly, clenched his teeth, and shut up.

Another fifteen minutes bled away and Kim took over microphone duty again. They'd covered several blocks, crawling along at parade-speed, and so far they'd seen absolutely nothing. They had entered a residential area now, and the houses were all quiet, closed up, shades drawn. The streets were almost totally deserted. 

The radio crackled. "Uh ... guys ..." Ty Davis' voice said uneasily. "Sorry to break in here, but we might have some ... uh ... some trouble ahead ..."

Bosco cursed. There were cars parked on both sides of the street they were on, and it had forced them into single-file. "Five-Five Charlie, we're on the ass-end here and I can't see a fuckin' thing around the damn bus. You're gonna have to be a little more specific."

"You'll be able to pull out again just ahead," Ty's voice said. "Stand by ..." -he moaned- "Oh, shit guys, we've got some major trouble here. They're flaggin' us down."

"_Who_ is flaggin' us down, Davis?" Bosco snapped irritably, but then he was able to pull the squad car back out around to flank the ambulance again, and he saw. 

It was a roadblock. Two brown jeeps and a Hummer were lined up across the street ahead of them. The Hummer sat in the center, the jeeps on either side. Bosco's eye was drawn immediately to the jeep on the right, which was mounted with a .50 caliber machine-gun. The gunner was not aiming at _them_ precisely, but he was in the general area.

"Five-Five David, be advised they want us to keep coming towards them," Ty said. "He's waving us forward."

"I can see him now," Bosco snarled. "Cut that Five-Five David shit out, would you, Davis?"

They crept forward until they were about twenty feet away from the three Army vehicles, the two squad cars still flanking the bus. A convoy truck pulled out of the driveway it had been hiding in and blocked them from the rear. 

They were boxed in.

Bosco put his hand on the doorhandle and felt Faith's hand clamp almost painfully onto his knee. "Don't, Bosco."

The Voice of God issued from the Hummer, either through a megaphone or built-in public address system: "_Shut that motherfucker down, right ... NOW!!!_" 

"_Go to hell!_" Kim Zambrano shouted back over the ambulance's PA system. 

_War of the PA systems! _Bosco thought crazily. _My speakers are bigger than yours!_ _Nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah!_

He glanced in the rearview mirror at the truck blocking them from the rear. Troop truck. But no troops were pouring out of it, and that was a good sign. Also, as big as it was, the truck still couldn't cover the whole width of the street, and there was plenty of maneuvering room.

That was an even _better_ sign.

A new voice over the radio now: "This is Sergeant Michael Sawyer, U.S. Army. You are in a big fuckin' heap of trouble, officers. Over."

Then, before anyone could respond: "This is Captain Fred Hanson. Stand by, Sergeant Sawyer. You in the ambulance and the police cars, please step out of your vehicles. Over."

"_Don't_, Bosco," Faith repeated urgently. Bosco looked over at Kim and Alex; no movement from the ambulance. Davis and Sully were on the other side; all he could see was the nose of their car. If Sawyer was the roadblock, then where was this Hanson guy? The helicopter, maybe; Bosco could hear it again, somewhere close above and getting louder.

"You're out of your assigned sector, Captain," Sawyer said coldly. Then, presumably to his new captives: "But you'd still better do what he says, folks. Get out."

Ty Davis' voice: "Uh, what exactly have we done? What do you want - ?"

"I want to blow your goddam heads off, that's what I want!" Sawyer snarled. "Now extract your fat asses from the goddam vehicles, _now_!"

_Oh, those wacky sergeants_, Bosco thought, and dimly he realized he was terrified almost to the point of numbness. _You gotta watch those wacky sergeants. Never know what they're gonna do._

"Let's just take this a step at a time, shall we?" Hanson said. His voice was pleasant and mild, more suited to a benign sitcom dad than an army captain. "I'm the ranking officer here. Now, officers, if you'd just like to-"

"Shut the fuck up, Hanson!" Sawyer broke in. "I have my orders straight from Colonel Landon! My orders are to neutralize anyone who engages in any activity which is not in the public interest during a time of national catastrophe, and that is exactly what I mean to do."

"Landon's been _relieved_, so stand _down_, Sergeant!" Hanson barked. Ol' Sitcom Dad was suddenly gone and a cold, merciless career soldier was in his place. "Those are New York City Police Officers down there, along with two unarmed paramedics! If you or any of your men do anything, I repeat _anything_ without my express permission, I _will_ classify you as deserters and you _will_ be dealt with accordingly! You hear me? Sawyer? Answer me, goddammit! Do you hear what I'm say-"

Faith saw it first and screamed. "Oh _Christ_, _NO!_"

The jeep's gunner opened fire on the ambulance.

Bosco would spend the rest of his life bitterly wishing he'd missed what happened next. But from where he and Faith were sitting, they were cursed with an unobstructed view. 

Kim Zambrano jerked violently in her seat, a fan of blood spraying across the milky remains of the front windshield and up the side windows, mercifully obscuring the view. A half-second later, the gunner seemed to realize what he was doing and swung the .50-Cal on a downward arc. Unfortunately, he forgot to release the trigger, and drew a smoking line down the front of the bus and along the pavement. 

It might have been as long as ten seconds before anything else happened; Bosco never knew exactly. But there was definitely a short, shocked moment when he could hear nothing but quick, overlapped snatches of conversation over the radio.

Ty Davis' voice, small and wounded: "-oh Jesus ... oh dear Jesus Christ ... did you see tha-"

Captain Hanson: "-Sawyer! You son of a _bitch_, you son-"

Sully: "-kill 'em! We're taking them out! They shot Kim! They shot K-"

Behind them, the driver and passenger of the convoy truck both leapt out. The soldier from the driver's side turned and ran off down the street, throwing one terrified glance back over his shoulder. The soldier from the passenger side ran past Five-Five David - so close that Bosco could have reached out the window and grabbed him if he'd had a mind to - dropped to one knee, and started firing his M4 at the Hummer. 

Above, the helicopter opened up with some sort of heavy machine-gun, the gunfire raking across the jeeps and the Hummer. The gunner who had killed Kim was torn apart, and Bosco found that despite it all he could still find righteous satisfaction in that. Bosco could see the chopper now, too; he thought it might be a Black Hawk. Not that he cared. He had absolutely no idea who was where or who was shooting at who or who was on who's side.

He decided that he didn't care about that either, and didn't particularly want to stick around to take sides.

He threw the cruiser into reverse and jammed the pedal down. The car lurched backwards, and at the last second he realized he'd forgotten to correct for the truck behind them, viciously swinging the wheel around in time to avoid backing directly into it. The rearview mirror on the passenger side caught in the truck's grill and was torn off with a grinding shriek. 

Once he'd cleared the truck, he brought the car around in a one-eighty spin so absurdly perfect it would have brought tears to his Academy driving instructor's eyes.

_The next step is summed up in one word: run._

With the insane free-for-all not even a block behind them, the radio came alive again, this time with Sully's voice. "Boscorelli! Where are you, you son of a bitch!? I see ... I see Taylor ... Taylor got away ... she's running ... Bosco! Pick her up! Bosco! Pick Taylor up-"

Bosco reached up, tore the radio handset from his shoulder, snapped the cord, and threw it out the window. 

"Bosco!" Faith gasped next to him. "Bosco! Stop! Stop! Stop the car!"

He ignored her. He ignored her until he was sure they were safe and far enough from the melee to stay that way before finally pulling the car over. 

He looked over; next to him, Faith appeared to be slowly and exquisitely choking to death. She writhed in her seat, one hand clutching at the air, fingers hooked into claws, opening, closing, opening, closing ...

_Oh that's just perfect_, he thought wildly. _That would be just the perfect ending to this, wouldn't it? Faith dies on me right here and right now._

Helplessly, he reached out to do something, slap her on the back or something, and was surprised when she viciously slapped his hand away. Then she uttered a meaty _urking_ sound low in her throat, groped blindly for the doorhandle, and got the door open just in time.

"_You ..._" she gasped when she fell back against the seat. She at last managed to get a good lungful of air and promptly used it to scream, _"You left them to die, Bosco! You left Alex to die!"_

Bosco swallowed hard. He had, hadn't he? That was just what he'd done.

_But then_, a nasty little voice said. _They were _already_ dead, weren't they?_

Well, yes, but what did that matter? Kim was sick, too. Did that make what those bastards did to her RIGHT? They _murdered_ her. They murdered her in cold blood.

_Yeah,_ the nasty little voice chuckled. Each time that voice spoke, it sounded a bit more familiar_. Kind of like what you wanted to let Sergeant Cruz do to Dougie Francis that night, huh?_

Bosco froze. 

"No," he said out loud, softly, _firmly_. "_No_. This is different. _So_ different."

Faith watched him, still fighting for air, her expression best described as puzzled rage. "_What?_"

He ignored her. No, what Cruz had wanted to do to Dougie was different. Dougie was scum, a failure, a loser, and dangerous to boot. Kim Zambrano wasn't. Was that judgmental? Why, hell yes! Self-righteous? Why, hell yes! That didn't mean it wasn't true. 

No, it was different. 

_Is it really?_ Cruz' purring, deadly voice said. _Is it really so different, handsome?_

"What the hell were we supposed to _do_, Faith? Huh?" he snarled finally. "We had no choice!"

"You left them to die," she said again, but there was no power in it now, no conviction. 

"There was nothing we could do, Faith. You understand that?" He looked at her, put a hand on her shoulder. She flinched, but this time she didn't slap it away. "Faith? You understand that, right? Faith-"

"YES!" she shouted. She started to weep thinly, and after a moment, she reached for him.

"Kim," she cried softly as they embraced. "God ... Kim ..."

"I know."

She sobbed into his shoulder. "What's happening? Oh, God, Bosco, what's happening?"

He squeezed his eyes shut, feeling tears forming around the edge of his vision but not allowing them to fall. "I don't know, Faith."

Bosco held her, and she held him, drawing what little strength they could from each other for better than an hour and a half. And as he held her, as he felt the terrible fever-heat from her sinking into him, as he smelled the sour sweat and fear and death on her, it kept running through his mind like a rat in a wheel ... 

_Superflu mortality rate is 100%_

_Superflu mortality rate is 100%_

_Superflu mortality rate is 100%_

Perched on a dead and darkened stoplight not terribly far away was a large black crow, watching them with twitchy, alien curiosity.


	5. Chapter 5 June 25 26 Day 4 5

As is customary, I'll say thanks for the reviews :) Now on to Chapter 5: Bosco is woken from a dream by a frantic phone-call from Faith ...

You know, I was originally gonna have it work out so Cruz would be the one to get shot by the Army, but I figured people might enjoy that a bit too much ;) Her death-scene should still be fun to write, though ... it's comin' up in Chapter 6 or maybe 7

There is one character death in this chapter; the character can be considered major or minor, depending on your point of view.

* * *

  
  
  
  


**Chapter 5**

June 25-26 

Day 4-5

_There is no God up in the sky tonight_

- Nine Inch Nails

  
  


Bosco took Faith home, and when she asked him to stay with her and her family, he lied and told her that he wanted to go back out alone, see if there was anything he could do.

Instead, he'd gone home himself, not even bothering to take the squad car back to the Five-Five. He went home and lay down on his bed still in full uniform, and for perhaps three hours he simply lay there, staring at the ceiling, listening to the faint gunshots, the faint screams that would occasionally drift through the window.

_I have to move_, he kept telling himself in the rare moments when his thoughts became coherent. Of course he did. He had to go, check on his mom, check on Cruz, and he was beginning to think he should have stayed with Faith. He kept seeing her, standing in the doorway looking dazed and cadaverous, Fred and the kids huddled in the apartment behind her. He had failed Sully and Davis and Taylor - that couldn't be helped. Now he had to think about the friends who were left.

But he only lay there, and in his mind's eye, all he kept seeing was the afternoon disaster, hearing it, replaying it. The heavy, chunky roar of the .50-caliber. Kim slammed back against her seat just before the bloody curtains were drawn over ambulance's windows. The helicopter opening up on Sawyer's roadblock. Sully screaming at him to pick Taylor up, that Taylor had gotten away and was running, even as Bosco was running himself.

But it was Kim he kept returning to, and new details kept surfacing in his memory like corpses floating to the surface of a lake. He remembered there had been blood running out of the seam at the bottom of the ambulance's door, pooling on the ground under it. He remembered seeing what might have been the vague shape of Kim's body through the streaked red haze of the windows, slumped over the steering wheel ...

_I slept with her_, he thought suddenly, and sure enough, that was technically true; it had been about two years before, that night outside the bowling alley, in his Mustang. A little bout of unexpected car-sex, spontaneous and fun and delightfully naughty with Jimmy Doherty and Carlos Nieto waiting on them only a few feet away. Kim, pretty and supple and warm and willing, and he enjoyed it, not having the slightest idea that he'd end up watching her be chewed apart by an Army machine-gun-

Now _that_ thought got him moving.

Bosco scrambled up and ran for the bathroom. He didn't quite make it. 

He knelt on the floor for another five, perhaps six minutes, holding the edge of the toilet with trembling arms, nose filled with the sour stench of his own vomit. His vision seemed dim and hazy, and he wondered faintly if he might be catching this sickness after all.

_Gonna feel sorry for yourself, eh, handsome? _Cruz' voice asked. _Gonna just sit here and wallow in it like a pig in shit, huh? You _know_ that's all it is, Boscorelli. You fucking coward._

He spat viciously into the bowl, clenched his teeth, and stood up. Wallowing in self-pity. That was _exactly_ what he was doing. Goddamned if it wasn't.

Bosco went to the bedroom closet and took out the rifle. It was the one given to him by Glen Hobart, that crazy ol' ESU buddy of his who had decided to check out via suicide by sniper. He'd kept the rifle though he'd never used it, and it felt strange to load it and sling it over his shoulder after all this time. But it was a damned fine gun, and he had a feeling he might be needing it.

He grabbed an extra box of shells and changed into civvies, keeping back his body armor, gunbelt, the spare handgun in the ankle-holster, and the badge. The rest of the uniform was tossed in a careless heap on the bed. He would never wear it or any other again.

Bosco looked around the apartment for what he believed might be the last time (though it would not; he would return a final time later that evening), and left.

  
  


***

  
  


Pete Ridge had been a pilot and a damned good one. Earlier that afternoon, at around the time Bosco and his friends were riding around the city spreading their message, Pete had climbed into his beloved little blue-and-white Cessna and started to spread a message of his own. He had about a thousand hastily-prepared leaflets that contained essentially the same information as Alex Taylor's fact sheet, which he proceeded to drop on as much of New York as possible. A thousand leaflets wasn't much in the long run, but Pete felt he was doing his part. His wife and baby son had both died of the superflu, and he was well on his way himself.

About twenty minutes and about six hundred leaflets after he began, Pete Ridge's beloved little blue-and-white Cessna had been brought down with a surface-to-air missile fired from an Army checkpoint not that far from the 55th Precinct police station. The soldiers manning the post, most of them dying on their feet already, then had a mild disagreement over this somewhat harsh tactic. This mild disagreement resulted in almost total slaughter. 

Bosco knew none of this, of course, but he _did_ see some of the results; he had to make a detour around the smoking remains Pete Ridge's beloved little blue-and-white Cessna, which sat in the center of the street and still contained the smoking remains of Pete Ridge.

He'd tried his mother's apartment already and found it empty. Her bedroom had been in a state of serious disarray, drawers hanging open, clothes scattered around. That was not a good sign. That, he suspected, was a sign of someone preparing a very speedy suitcase.

Now he was back here, at the bar. His hope of finding her was fading, though. Fast.

It was as inconceivable as it was unnerving; last night, this bar had been more or less alive and humming with people drinking and dancing and having some nice, innocent fun reconnecting with a dead decade. Last night his mother had stood behind the bar, brimming over with good cheer, making the liquor flow with great gusto.

Bosco wove slowly between tables, most of them still littered with empty beer bottles, a few overturned. Most of the booze had been looted already, and broken glass crunched underfoot. He stepped on something that rolled under his foot and almost sent him sprawling; a squat little shot-glass. He kicked it across the room and heard it shatter somewhere in the darkened far corner of the bar, near the fire-exit where he'd seen that woman in the stupid Cindy Lauper-looking getup, the one who had looked like Cruz.

Cruz. It always came rolling back around to Cruz, didn't it?

He'd check on her, in time. She was probably still at her apartment; he didn't think it was in Cruz' nature to go to the hospital. On those occasions where she'd been injured on the job, he knew she resented the medical attention that followed, with its implication that she was subject to the same frailties as the rest of the human race. No, knowing Cruz she would have stayed in bed, getting sicker and sicker, believing that it was just a bad bug, that eventually she'd beat it. After all, she was Sergeant Cruz of Anti-Crime. She could shoot a man in the back and then pretend to hear him condemning his friend with his dying words. What chance did a loathsome little germ have against someone like that?

Bosco was starting to believe that it might just have a pretty good one.

There were two bodies in here with him, he saw; a man was sprawled on a pool table and another was slumped over the bar. The one at the bar looked like the classic caricature of a booze-hound, face-down in his beer. Most of the bar's stock had already been looted, true, but when this guy had died of the superflu he'd managed to do it with a glass in his hand. That man, Bosco thought, had either been very pathetic or very clever.

The body on the pool table had met a more direct end; judging from what still remained above his neck (which wasn't much), Bosco guessed a close-range shotgun blast to the face. And he didn't think it looked much like a suicide.

He drew his sidearm as he went over to the bar, peering over it hesitantly. For a moment he so completely expected to see his mother lying dead on the other side that for about a tenth of a second he actually _did_ see her. His breath caught, and then he saw what it was; a red leather jacket. Just somebody's leftover from Retro Eighties Night. Good ol' Retro Eighties Night. We can dance, we can dance. Everybody pull down your pants.

He went back into the office area, and it was there that he found the last traces of his mother.

There was a note on a desk. Written in large block letters at the top was the word MAURICE. Under that was a simple, quickly scrawled note.

  
  


_I'm leaving this because I know you'll come back here looking for me. I left one in my apartment too. Don't worry (_this was underlined_). I'm going to try to leave New York. I don't know where I'm going but I'll try and call you when I get somewhere safe. You were right. Soldiers came around 1:00 AM and made everybody leave. A guy mouthed off to one of them and the soldier hit him with the butt of his gun and broke the guy's nose. It was very scary, but I'm staying calm. I don't know where Mikey is. Please try to find him. And be very careful. _

_Always know I love you, Maurice._

Bosco swallowed the lump that was forming in his throat and absently stuffed the note into his pocket. He must have overlooked the one she'd left at her apartment. Find Mikey? Christ, he hadn't even _thought_ of Mikey. He had to admit to himself that Mikey came in relatively low on his list of priorities at the moment. Sad but true. He'd look for Mikey eventually, but he had a lot to do first.

And there was that last line to consider - _Always know I love you, Maurice_. Not just _I love you_ or her more common _Luv Ya._ No, it was _Always know I love you, Maurice_. So formal, so _final_. 

As if she never really expected to see him again.

And that was probably likely; if she was going to attempt to leave the city, she might have some trouble. Traffic was jammed solid for blocks, and it was becoming clear that a lot of people were simply dying in their cars. Worse still, the rumors of Army machine-gun posts were no longer rumors; it was clear that the posts were there, and in many places still operative. 

So when you cut right down to it, he was too late. He could try to look for her, but how the hell would he even begin to start? There were no specifics in the note, no idea what route she was planning to take. She could be anywhere by now. _Anywhere_. Why the hell would she write such a pissy, airheaded note? She was smarter than that.

_She was in a hurry, idiot. And she has this thing, this superflu. Not bad yet, but she must _know_ that's what she has. That couldn't have helped her concentration much, could it?_

He left the office and looked helplessly around the bar, shaking his head. No, there was nothing he could do about his mother, probably nothing he could do about Mikey, either. Rose had the disease, and he supposed Mikey did as well. Was he really the only person who wasn't incubating this little bastard?

Well, maybe he _was_.

Bosco felt suddenly very cold. Now _that_ was a happy thought, wasn't it? What if he _was_ the only human being who was immune to this? 

"No," he muttered, and in the spooky quiet of the bar a murmur could be very loud. "No. There have to be others. _Have_ to be."

_Oh, that's _great_ logic_, Cruz' voice growled somewhere in the back of his head. He pushed it away.

He took a long breath and sat down at a table. It suddenly occurred to him that there was a sly, vaguely noticeable rankness in the air; the two dead bodies in here with him were already starting to decompose. And he guessed that neither of them had smelled very good to begin with.

_Listen, Maurice. _

Oh God. It was his _mother's_ voice in his head now. At the same time he knew it wasn't, not really; just his own overtaxed mind taking on different personae. But even so, this was surely a sign of insanity, wasn't it?

_You'd better not start feeling all sorry for yourself again_, Rose Boscorelli said in the center of his mind. _Ma's a lost cause. Mikey's a lost cause. No shame in admitting it. You're better off worrying about Cruz and Faith now. After all, Faith's your partner and your best friend, and Cruz is the closest thing you have to a woman in your life. In her way._

_But first, sleep. Go back home and rest. Not just lay around; actually _sleep_. You've been up for nearly twelve hours and you've seen a lot. You're witnessing history. More than that; you're witnessing the END of history. You're watching Faith physically fall apart and you can't do a damned thing about it. You've watched a bunch of Army renegades gun down an unarmed paramedic who was also your friend. You think you have to keep moving, do something, but you know what? There's nothing you can do, and you're only hurting yourself._

_Go back home, Maurice. Get a few hours' sleep, at least. Lay low for a while._

Bosco drew another long breath and stood up. He decided he would go home and get some sleep.

After all, he was a good boy. He could never go against his mother.

  
  


***

  
  


As he lay in the darkness and the silence (which was still punctuated by the occasional gunshot, and at one point something that sounded like an enormous explosion several blocks over), he found that sleep came with unsettling ease. 

As he slipped gratefully into its warm grip, he found himself thinking of the crow again. Two days ago, that had been. The crow on the streetlight, and that one bizarre millisecond where he thought it was a man. There had been something else there, as well; a very clear feeling of that sly ol' _deja vu_. It made no sense.

Bosco slept. And as he slept, he dreamed. 

And as he dreamed, it came to him. It _was_ something from the past, a real and tangible memory, something that had happened to him about five years before, as he-

  
  


***

  
  


-as he sat in the squad car outside Emily Yokas' elementary school, waiting for Faith. Emily, about nine years old at this time, had been punched by an older boy. The boy, however, claimed Emily had punched him first. Or something. Bosco didn't know the specifics, and honestly, he didn't much care. Both kids had been kept after school for punishment, and now Faith felt she had to drop by in person to straighten things out. And maybe use the uniform to throw a nice scare into the boy. 

As Bosco waited, Henry Pape, a scrawny little white guy who wore baggy clothes and gold chains and tried to talk the talk _(yo-yo-yo _and _what-up dog_ and so forth), walked right past the car. Bosco might have missed him completely if Henry had been smart enough to keep his eyes forward and act natural. But Henry eyed the car nervously, even slowing down a bit, maybe trying to see if he knew the cop sitting in the passenger seat. Turned out he did; Bosco had busted Henry once before, for good ol' fashioned purse-snatching. 

This time Henry was wanted for a string of daytime burglaries, so naturally Bosco took after him. He chased Henry for several blocks, but the little poseur was too fast and too slippery.

Bosco finally admitted defeat and started to trudge back to the cruiser. Faith would probably be waiting, and she would want to know where he'd disappeared to. She'd probably be pissed off at him, as if he had a choice when a wanted criminal just sashays right past his car. And as if all of that weren't bad enough, he'd also have to tell her that he'd lost the little bastard anyway.

"Jesus Tap-Dancing Christ," he muttered, drawing a few startled glances from passing pedestrians. "Jesus Tap-Dancing Christ in a sidecar." Bosco turned to a young man who was holding an ice-cream cone and smiling slightly. "What, you lookin' at something? You think it's funny?"

The young man shrugged and tried to suppress the smile.

Then Bosco heard the scream.

It was definitely Henry; Bosco knew because the little bastard had squealed like that when the chase had begun. Like a pig. Like an honest-to-God _pig_. Henry must have doubled back at some point, because the scream came from the direction of the squad car. 

Another scream drifted towards him. God, Henry really _did_ sound just like a pig. Bosco smiled and started to run. 

He waited for another scream, heard it, and homed in.

Henry Pape turned out to be hanging from a fire escape in an alley; how the hell he'd gotten up there so fast was a mystery to Bosco. At any rate it didn't matter; Henry was now in a fair amount of trouble. He was screaming. His legs were waving in the air comically. Ol' Henry Pape was looking at a three-story fall, albeit into a pile of garbage bags. But a three-story fall was still a three-story fall.

There was someone else up there as well, someone standing on the fire escape above Henry, looking down at him with detached curiosity. Bosco saw the blue, saw the bulky belt around the figure's waist, saw the glint of metal on the figure's chest. Another cop.

"Hey down there!" the cop called down, waving.

Bosco grinned and waved back. The other cop would eventually pull Henry up, of course, but he was apparently gonna let the little shithead dangle a bit first. Here was a man after Bosco's own heart, for sure. 

The cop knelt down and seemed to look down at Henry with fatherly disapproval, shaking his head ruefully.

Then, to Bosco's surprise, the cop started to pry Henry's fingers off the fire escape.

"This little piggy went to market!" the cop cried merrily, and plucked two of Henry's fingers away from the fire escape, like a man flipping switches with pizzaz.

Below, Bosco's surprise evaporated and he began to laugh. This was bad, but it wasn't _that_ bad. There were those garbage bags below, of course; Henry would land in them. Might break a leg, but it wouldn't kill him. And it would _look_ very appropriate; oh, Mr. Garbage Man? Here's another big ol' sack of shit for you.

Above, Henry began to shriek.

"This little piggy stayed home!" the cop yelled. Two more fingers were pried away.

Henry began to beg, a sputtering buzzsaw of: "Nopleasenopleasenopleasenoplease!"

The cop continued his surgical burglarectomy on the fire escape, unmoved. And by the time the little piggy went wee-wee-wee all the way home and Henry fell like a fucking stone, Bosco was absolutely howling with laughter. That man up there was a genius. If he'd just done the predictable thing and stepped on Henry's fingers, that would have been funny enough. But this guy was a superb showman as well as a kickass cop. Bosco's hat was truly off to him.

Gravity did its work, and sure enough, Henry broke his leg in two places.

Bosco shook his head, still chuckling, and walked over to the little loser. 

"You don't run from me," Bosco said amiably, jabbing a finger down at him. "You know that? You don't run from me."

Henry only howled. He now appeared to have an extra knee-joint.

"Hey there, partner."

Bosco turned. The cop had come down through the building and out into the alley with surprising speed, and was now standing behind him.

Bosco's smile faltered a bit. The first thing that went through his mind was that this man was crazy.

But as fast as that thought came, it evaporated and Bosco stuck out his hand. The cop was perhaps a bit older than him (though Bosco found he couldn't guess just how _much_ older) and his most distinguishing feature was the wide, sunny, absolutely _gleeful_ grin that split his face. It wasn't insanity, Bosco saw; it was only an almost rabid love for the job. Pinned to the cop's jacket just to the left of his badge was a yellow smiley-face button. Swersky would have Bosco's ass on a plate if he ever caught him with such a non-reg modification to the uniform, and Bosco had to admire this guy's stones. Here was a man who loved his work as much as Bosco, maybe more. 

And it was _refreshing_. Glen Hobart, Sergeant Cruz ... they were both years in his future, but even if he'd known them at the time, Bosco would still have to admit that he'd rather hang out with this guy. Here was a cop he could admire, maybe even - dare he say it - _learn_ from. He'd never had anyone he could call a _mentor_ before, and before now the very idea would have earned only a derisive laugh. 

But there a definite appeal in it now.

"You from the Five-Five?" Bosco asked, noting the number on the cop's collar. "Never seen you before."

The cop shrugged and shook Bosco's hand. The merry grin never wavered. "Officer Richard Farrell at your service," he said jovially. "Used to be First Watch. Switched to Third just last week. Nice to make your acquaintance, partner."

"Absolutely," Bosco said, and he had to admit that Farrell's grin was infectious. Once you got used to it, anyway.

Henry, now apparently forgotten, reminded them he was still there. "_My leeeeeeg!!!_"

Without ever breaking Bosco's gaze, Farrell's foot shot out with eerie, preternatural speed and landed a kick squarely on Henry's broken leg. The scream this produced was absolutely _titanic_, and Henry wouldn't be bothering them again; he passed out. 

Farrell's grin finally faded (though it didn't entirely disappear), and he leaned in confidentially. "Uh, now, we don't have to _tell_ anyone about this, do we?"

Bosco smiled. "Absolutely not." 

"'Absolutely and absolutely not,'" Farrell said wryly. "That about all you can say, son?"

"Absolutely not."

Farrell threw back his head and laughed. It was loud, hearty and right from the belly, and he clapped Bosco on the shoulder almost hard enough to send him staggering. Normally, such a move would have come across as patronizing and would have royally pissed Bosco off, maybe even put him in a fighting mood. It didn't now. No sir. He liked this guy. He _respected_ this guy, right from the jump, and that wasn't something Bosco could say very often.

"That ..." Bosco began, uncharacteristically tongue-tied. "That, just now, it was ... it was pretty funny," he finished lamely.

Farrell nodded. The mirthful grin was on full-power again. "Thanks. I aim to please."

_-ringing-_

"I mean, I don't think even I'd have had the balls to do that. Not with another cop watchin' me."

Farrell shrugged. "You gotta have faith in your fellow cops, right?"

_Faith._

"Oh, shit," Bosco said. "My partner, she's gonna be wondering where-"

_-ringing-_

"Ah, she can wait," Farrell said with a wave. "She can wait." He studied Bosco as if assessing him, deciding whether ol' Bos was worth his time. "You know, Bosco, you and I really oughtta get together for a beer sometime."

Bosco felt a childish, uncharacteristic twinge of excitement, like some little voice inside him had suddenly started chattering _oh-boy-oh-boy-oh-boy._ He kept his expression neutral, though. It was important never to appear too eager, too much like a bootlicking flunky. He had to pretend to consider, pretend to decide whether Farrell was worth _his_ time or not, even though he really wanted to get to know this guy better. He had to keep Farrell's respect. _At all costs._

_- ringing -_

Out loud, Bosco heard himself say, "Yeah, man, that'd be great! When?"

Farrell grinned. "Anytime, son. Any old time. I'm gonna be switching again, to Second Watch, but you can still find me. Now, you'd better be getting back to your partner." He nodded at the unconscious Henry. "Mind if I take care of this jagoff? Save you the paperwork."

Bosco shook his head. "No, man. I mean, go right ahead. You were the one who caught him. And like I said, it was a beautiful fall. Perfect ten."

Farrell grinned. They shook hands again, Farrell's grip vice-firm and oddly cold.

Then they parted, and Bosco continued back to the squad car in a far better mood. Faith was there waiting for him, and Faith _was_ mad, but when she saw how cheerful he was, she backed down. She asked what happened, and he told her a half-truth; he told her that he'd chased a guy he _thought_ was Henry Pape, but it turned out to be just some dumb kid who decided to run from the cops even though he hadn't done anything wrong. Bosco told her he'd cut the kid loose. Faith never suspected any of what really happened. Not for a second. 

But for some reason Farrell had faded in his mind, becoming lost in the daily concerns of work and life, and when Bosco finally tried to track him down for that beer a week later, he was disappointed. Farrell _had_ been assigned to the Five-Five, but he'd resigned - as it happened, only a few days after Bosco met him. Then he'd disappeared, and he'd left no forwarding address, no clues as to where he had gone on to live or work.

_-ringing-_

Five years later, Bosco saw Farrell again - or _thought_ he did - sitting up on a streetlight. That was why he'd felt that weird sense of deja vu. The hallucination had been Farrell, of all people. 

But it had really just been a crow. 

Hadn't it?

And the dream brought something else back, as well; he was sure that, at one point during their conversation, Farrell had called him "Bosco."

But Bosco was _also_ quite sure that during their entire short conversation, he'd never once told Officer Richard Farrell his name ...

-_ringing_-

***

  
  


-_ringing_-

-_ringing-_

Ringing. God, what was with all the damned ringing, ringing, _ringing_?

He awoke in the dark only able to see the fat red numbers on his clock: 12:02 AM. He'd gotten a little over two hours' sleep.

The phone was ringing. He groped blindly for the receiver, pulled it off the cradle, and brought it to his ear ...

... only to be assaulted by the racket on the other end, a broken chorus of high-pitched screaming. Most of it was shrill and unintelligible, but he picked out the words "mommy" and "daddy" and "dead" and somewhere in the middle of the mess an adult voice was trying to get through and be heard, an adult _female_ voice-

"... Bos ... Bosco? ... Bosco, are you there? ... Bos-"

"Faith?"

"Bosco? ... oh Jesus, Bosco ... _help me!_"

"What? What is it?"

Her voice seemed to fade a bit and she was suddenly no longer talking to him. "Emily, take Charlie ... take him into the living room, _now_! Oh Jesus, oh dear Jesus ..."

From somewhere in the background, barely coherent: "No! I wanna stay with daddy!"

"JUST _GO_, EM!" Faith screamed. Then her voice came back clearer again, urgent and desperate and clotted with tears. "Bosco, it's Fred, it's Fred ... _I can't wake him up, Bosco!_ I think ... oh Jesus, Bosco, I think he's _dead!_"

In the far background, a fresh burst of wails from Emily Yokas.

Still sure that this too must be a dream, Bosco groped for his bedside lamp. "Did you ... did you call 911, Faith?"

Faith screamed louder than he would have thought possible in her condition. "_WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK I DID FIRST, YOU DUMB ASSHOLE? THERE'S NO ANSWER! NO ANSWER AT 911!_"

Bosco's brain, still about sixty percent asleep, began to gibber: _Fred's-dead-Fred's-dead-Fred's-dead-Fred's_-

"Okay, Faith," he said mechanically. "I'll be over soon as I can. Okay?"

_What the hell does she think _I_ can do about it, anyway?_ he thought petulantly.

Faith swallowed audibly. "Oh-oh-okay, Bos ... thank you ... God .. I don't ... I ..."

"Just stay calm, right?" It sounded incredibly stupid, but he could think of nothing else to say.

"Please hurry," she said weakly. "Please, please hurry."

  
  
  
  


***

  
  


Heart pounding, Bosco reached out and knocked lightly on Faith's door.

"Bosco?" she cried, voice high and shaky. "That you?"

"Yeah, Faith, I'm here."

Several clicks and clacks as she undid the chain and unlocked the door. There was the low, wooden squeal of a piece of furniture being slid out of the way. The door opened and the stench washed over him. The apartment was humid and rank, the smells of sickness and cure both hitting him with equally nauseating force as he stepped inside. The hot, somehow _itchy_ smell of Vick's Vapo-rub dominated. 

Faith was in her bathrobe, hair hanging lank and lifeless in her eyes. She was holding her gun at her side. Oddly enough, her appearance had improved somewhat since this afternoon, though not by a whole lot; the swelling in her neck had gone down, but she still looked several hundred miles removed from okay. 

"There were looters earlier," she said hoarsely. "They went through the whole building. That's what woke me up. I fired a shot into the wall. Maybe that's why they left. I dunno. They're gone now." She looked at him and saw Hobart's rifle over his shoulder, her eyes wild. "They _are_ gone, right?"

Bosco nodded numbly. "Yeah. I didn't see anybody."

She swallowed and beckoned with her pistol. "Come on."

They passed through the living room. Emily Yokas was sitting on the couch, Charlie lying across her lap. Charlie was either sleeping or unconscious; Bosco could hear him breathing, though it was labored and rattling. Emily was awake and staring emptily at the TV, which showed nothing but the Emergency Broadcast System test pattern and emitted a thin and toneless whine.

"Hey, Em," Bosco said softly.

Emily didn't look up. She blinked once. That was it.

Faith tugged gently at his sleeve. "Bos ..."

Bosco didn't want to go into Faith and Fred's bedroom. He _really_ didn't want to go in there, but that was the whole reason he was here, wasn't it? Faith went ahead of him and stood expectantly by the door, looking like some sallow carny standing next to the sideshow tent. Come on in folks, and see the dead Fred. That wasn't very kind, but it was suddenly all he could see.

"Bosco," she rasped as he brushed past her. She was holding her pistol out to him, butt-first. 

"What-?"

"Take it away from me," she said, tears overspilling and running down her cheeks. She shook her head helplessly and looked pointedly towards the living room, where Emily sat with her little brother in her arms. "I thought about it, you know?" she whispered. "One for Em, one for Charlie, one for me. I _hate_ myself for it. I don't want to do that. How would I ever do that? I kept thinking about how I could do it without ... without scaring them, without them knowing what hit them. What if I missed and only ... only wounded ... I don't want to do it. But I don't know ... I don't know how much longer we can ..." She looked at him pleadingly. "You know?"

Bosco only nodded and took the pistol from her, his chest tight and his guts loose. In front of him, the bedroom was dark but for the light spilling in from the hall. The curtains had been pulled and Fred Yokas was just a vague, dark shape in the bed. Bosco reached for the light switch and felt Faith's hand on his.

"No," she said softly. "Please don't."

He shook his head inwardly and went into the darkened room. This was where they'd slept for so many years, though hard times, good times, the place where they'd made love. They'd gotten through it all here. Fred's alcoholism, the money trouble, her abortion, the friction over her job. They'd worked through it all just to have it come down to this. Bosco felt sick, hot anger swell up in his chest, and what made it terrible was that it was anger with no direction, no focal point. He was angry about this whole goddam mess, and yet he didn't have anyone to be angry at. He yearned to be back where he was only a few short days ago, worrying about his career path, worrying about Faith turning on him, worrying about Cruz' behavior. Worrying about _Cruz_.

_Christ_, he thought as he neared the bed. _I don't have to actually _touch_ him, do I?_

Well, _of course_ he did. He could see Fred now, at least partially; he lay face-up, his head tipped back, mouth hanging open. He looked as if he'd died thrashing, gasping for breath, and in his final moments he probably would have looked much like a beached fish. Bosco couldn't hear any breathing, didn't see even the slightest hint of movement.

Reluctantly, he reached out and touched Fred's neck. It was hideous, bulbous, and he found it unlikely he'd ever get a pulse through the bloated, rubbery skin. 

He didn't need one anyway; Fred was cold. Bosco winced and held his hand palm-out over Fred's mouth, willing the man to prove him wrong.

But there was nothing.

He turned to Faith, who stood watching in silhouette from the doorway, and shook his head slowly. 

She nodded. Then she fell weakly back against the doorframe and slid slowly to the floor, ending up with her knees pulled up under her chin. Her bathrobe and nightgown both rode up, and with horror Bosco saw she had nothing on underneath. He turned away quickly, went over to the window, and all but fell into the chair next to it. 

He sat there for a long time, perhaps twenty minutes, listening to Faith cry over her dead husband. Eventually her sobs tapered off and there was only silence, silence but for the faint whine of the Emergency Broadcast System from the living room. He pushed the curtains aside listlessly and looked out. There was a faint orange glow low across the sky as far as he could see, and he knew what it was; fires burning. Fires were burning all across the city, unchecked. 

All across America. 

All across the world.

_No sirens out there tonight,_ he thought bleakly. _No God in that sky, either_.

"You know," Faith murmured into the silence, startling him. "I sit here, and all I can keep thinking is, how long was I asleep next to him? ... You know ... how long did I sleep there next to him while he was ..." She broke off and swallowed hard. "I know that's the wrong way to think, but I can't help it."

Bosco was thinking of the Fire-Watchers, of that pretty little rookie, Pattie Wells.

_My boyfriend died last night_. _I woke up this morning and he was dead next to me._

_Yeah, _he thought bitterly._ There seems to be a lot of that going around._

"Bosco?"

Without turning, he sighed. "Yeah?"

"Take us to the hospital?"

He closed his eyes. "Faith ... you don't want to do that. You don't want to take Em and Charlie there, believe me. And the streets are still lousy. I passed a bunch of jagoffs takin' shots at each other on the way here. Saw a crashed plane earlier, right in the middle of the street. Trust me, you don't want to leave here."

"Yes, I do."

"Oh _Christ_, Faith, _why?_"

"_Please_, Bosco."

He turned. Her face was only a white circle in the dim light, her hollow, shadowed eyes making it look like a skull. He was relieved to see that she had righted her bathrobe. 

"Faith, don't you want to ... like ... don't you want to stay here ...?"

"_Die_ here, you mean?" she said with a wan smile. "That's what you're asking? Don't I want to die here with my family, at home?"

Bosco shrugged, swallowing the lump in his throat. "Yeah, I guess that's what I'm asking."

"Then no, I don't." She laughed humorlessly, weakly. "You know, I'm actually feeling better right now. Physically, I mean."

Bosco felt a small sliver of hope and smiled thinly. "Told you you were tough, Yokas."

Faith smiled sadly. "You didn't read Alex's paper, did you?"

"Not ... not all the way through, no."

"The docs said periods of temporary recovery weren't uncommon. Like with ... like with Fred this morning. Bos, you should have seen him, he ate breakfast, he was humming, singing. Hymns, I think. But it was only temporary."

Bosco closed his eyes and felt that bright, unfocused rage again, a sudden urge to yell at her, pound his fist against the wall, put it through the window.

"So what do you really want to do, Faith?" was all he said.

"I want to go to the hospital," she said. "I want us to die in the light, I want us to die with other people. I know it's gonna be bad there, but I don't ... I don't want to stay here anymore. This place. This apartment." She sniffed and looked around the bedroom. "This is a bad place to me now, Bosco."

Bosco leaned forward, shoulders sagging. He realized he was exhausted. Not in a physical sense, either. He wanted this to be over. He wanted _all_ of this to be over.

"Okay," he said, getting slowly to his feet. "We'll go. I'll take you over."

"Thank you." She stood up, met his eyes, and said hoarsely, "I love you, Bos."

Bosco nodded, lips trembling. He hugged her for the last time, tightly. "I love you too, Faith."


	6. Chapter 6 June 26 Day 5

Only two more to go now after this ... Here's Chapter 6: Bosco takes Faith and her kids to the hospital, then tries to comfort the dying Cruz ... Yes, that's right folks - this is the chapter where Cruz buys it ;)

  
  


It's the damndest thing; last week's episode of Third Watch starts out with Johnny Cash's cover of "Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails. Funny, because that's one of the songs I've been using to get myself into the mood to write this story ...

* * *

**Chapter 6**

June 26

Day 5

  
  


Bosco had expected it to be bad, but this was absolutely _monstrous_. 

Every chair in the ER's waiting area was occupied, though not one person appeared to be conscious and several were quite obviously dead. There were more people - more _bodies_ - on the floor. Some were in sleeping bags, some wrapped in sheets or blankets, some simply lying uncovered. And above it all, the smell was already overpowering. 

They stood just inside the automatic doors, silently digesting what they were seeing. Bosco was carrying the still-unconscious Charlie and a small, sad little overnight bag he'd slung over his shoulder. Faith, still in her bathrobe, stood next to him while Emily - who had still not spoken a single word since they'd left the apartment - clung to her mother's side, looking closer to seven than fourteen. 

He turned to Faith, the obvious question in his expression; _why the hell did you want to come here, and do you really want to stay?_

Faith only looked at him blankly, and he knew her mind was made up. Not that he really cared anymore. He remembered the grim little funeral ceremony they'd had over Fred just before they'd left her apartment, how Fred had looked covered by the sheet, the outline of his nose and open mouth still discernable through the fabric. Bosco supposed that when it came down to it the hospital wasn't much worse than that little ritual had been. 

"Let's find a place," she said.

Bosco shrugged wearily and they began to weave delicately through the field of bodies. He tried not to look down at them, but of course that was always exactly where his eyes ended up. He saw Nurse Mary Proctor, slumped dead against the wall next to a drinking fountain, and so he started concentrating on feet and hands rather than faces, being very careful not to tread on an arm or leg ... or maybe even a neck. He didn't really know what would be worse at this point; to step on someone and have them cry out ... or step on someone and get no reaction at all. 

They made their way into an examination room. There were people in there as well, of course, but there was a clear space on the floor in the far corner. 

Faith sat down heavily, back up against the wall, and gently took Charlie from him. She put her son across her lap and rested his head on her knee while Emily nuzzled in close next to her. 

"I have to go check on somebody," Bosco said softly, taking one of the blankets Faith had brought with her and tucking it around Charlie. "But I'll be back as soon as I can."

Faith smiled faintly. "Cruz?"

Bosco looked at her and shrugged. "I have to. I owe her that much. She has _nobody_, Faith." He tried to curb a sudden jab of the old, familiar defensiveness and was unsuccessful. "You want me to let her die alone, is that it? You think she deserves that?"

"She could be here somewhere, you know. What makes you think she'll be at home?"

"She will be," he said shortly. 

"Bosco," Faith said gently. "What makes you think she might not be dead already?"

He swallowed hard and looked away, eyes falling on the outstretched leg of a young boy who was lying either unconscious or dead across the room. Cruz could already be dead, how true. He knew that. But it didn't change what he felt he had to do.

Faith spoke before he could find a response. "Go to her, Bosco," she said. "I'm too tired and it's way too late in the game to hold a grudge. Help her, if you can."

Bosco squeezed Faith's shoulder warmly, then looked down at Charlie and tousled the boy's hair. "Back as soon as I can," he murmured. 

He stood up and started in on the grim task of picking his way back. 

"Bosco," she said just as he reached the exam room's door, and he turned. "Be ... be careful what you expect from her."

"What?"

Faith shook her head and smiled sadly. "I don't want to fight with you, Bos. But just keep one thing in mind; _some people don't change_. No matter what happens. Some people never change."

  
  


***

  
  


There had been that period of anarchy, of looting and arson and street battles erupting between gangs and the Army, between gangs and the police, between the Army and the police, between the Army and the Army, and so on and so on. But the streets were quieter now, only the aftermath of the bedlam visible in most places; bodies, burning cars, burning buildings, debris, broken glass, looted stores. 

That wasn't to say it was winding down just yet, though. Far from it. On the way to Cruz' building, Bosco passed the Pirate and his gang. 

The Pirate was a big guy who looked like Jesse Ventura right down to the mustache. He had a red bandana tied around his bald head and an Army-issue M4 rifle cradled in his arms like a baby, looking every inch the nickname Bosco blessed him with. The Pirate was leading a group of six men, who flanked two pickup trucks in rows of three. The trucks were almost ridiculously overstuffed with TV sets, stereos, DVD players, furniture, even a few small kitchen appliances. They were rolling serenely along at parade-speed, probably scouting for their next target.

Bosco felt a moment of apprehension as he passed them; they were all heavily armed, and he could see two were Army deserters still wearing their fatigues. He gave them a wide berth, and as he passed, he caught the Pirate's eye. The Pirate, his nose running freely, grinned at him and flashed him the thumbs-up.

Bosco returned both the grin and the thumb, noting a large, obscenely beautiful widescreen TV in the back of the second truck. "Yeah, that's great," he hissed softly through the smile. "How are you gonna watch that thing once the power goes, jagoff?"

The Pirate and his gang continued on their way, Bosco on his. Four more blocks now and he'd be at Cruz' building. 

And that raised the million-dollar question, didn't it? What _was_ he gonna find there? Cruz dead in her bed, neck swollen, mouth hanging open, frozen in her final death-agonies just like poor ol' Fred Yokas? Or would she be alive? If the latter, would she want to see him? It was a selfish and despicable way to think, but Bosco didn't care; he really wanted to know. The last time they'd spoken Cruz had basically thrown him out of her life, but already that conversation felt like it took place a lifetime ago. Almost, you might say, in another world entirely. It would be different now. It _had_ to be different now.

_Some people never change. _

Yeah, well, Faith didn't know everything. Cruz was dying, and would probably have realized it by now. Wouldn't she? She would understand the situation, right?

_Maybe she'll be delirious_, he thought suddenly. _Fevered and confused, and maybe she'll have her gun nearby, and maybe she'll take a shot at me ..._

Maybe maybe maybe. Fuck maybe. Three blocks to go now. 

An ambulance drifted slowly and somewhat unsteadily across the intersection ahead, and Bosco actually found himself able to recognize the driver under the glow of the streetlights.

"I'll be goddamned," he muttered. 

He caught up to the bus, gunning his engine a few times to get the driver's attention. The ambulance swerved drunkenly across the street and came to a jerky, stuttering halt. 

Doc Parker stepped lethargically out of the bus and tottered shakily alongside it, bracing himself against the side.

"Did I do something wrong, officer?" Doc said with an eerily cheerful smile as Bosco came to meet him. His voice was thick and muddy and almost unintelligible.

"What the hell are you doin' out here, Doc?" Bosco asked tightly.

Doc bent almost double, coughed long and hard, and almost fell over. Bosco rushed forward and steadied him, helping him over to the back of the ambulance and opening the back doors. Doc gratefully sat down on the edge of the rear bay. 

"Scouting," Doc said with a wan smile. "I'm out ... just lookin' for people who might need some help ..."

Bosco shook his head impatiently. "Doc, you gotta know by now that there's nothing you can do about this thing."

Doc offered a dismissive wave. "Morphine ... At this point ... I'm not too concerned about overdose. In fact" - he leaned forward and blew snot directly onto the street, then wiped his nose on his sleeve - "I'm thinking about saving a little back for myself."

"Yeah, well, lucky I ran into you. I might have a patient for ya."

"Yeah? Who?"

"A cop. Name's Cruz. Don't think you know her."

"I think I remember her," Doc murmured. "That drughouse a few weeks ago, right? Smoke inhalation, wasn't it? There was a meth junkie ... uh ... her sister, right ...?"

"Yeah, sure, whatever ... look, Doc, we gotta get moving."

"I'm not in such great shape to drive here, Bosco ..."

Bosco felt a flicker of annoyance. "You were doin' well enough a minute ago."

Doc laughed bitterly. "Only by the skin o' my teeth, Bosco. Didn't you see me?"

Bosco looked uncertainly at his Mustang. Not that it would really matter in the long run, but if they had to choose a vehicle, then it probably should be the bus. 

_You've lost everything else_, his mind snapped coldly, and now it had taken on the voice of Richard Farrell, that cop he'd met five years before and hadn't thought of since. _May as well lose that phallic symbol you call a car while you're at it. Why not start putting the past behind you, a piece at a time?_

Two minutes later Bosco was behind the wheel of the ambulance, the Mustang shrinking in the rearview mirror. 

Doc leaned against the door, eyes closed, the way Faith had yesterday. "Carlos is dead," he muttered. "Jimmy ... we found him in a ladder truck last night. Shot himself, as far as we could tell ... Dunno where he got the gun, but I don't suppose it matters ... Did you know Joey died yesterday morning?"

Bosco nodded, but Doc wasn't paying attention to him anyway and seemed to be talking - rambling - for his own benefit. 

"Nobody knows where Taylor is ... or Kim ..." Doc looked at him briefly. "You see either of 'em?"

_-Bosco! Pick her up! Bosco! Pick Taylor up-_

Bosco started to tell Doc about yesterday and immediately thought better of it. "No."

"How's Faith ... her family ...?"

"Fred's dead," Bosco said shortly, and found himself sorry that he'd run into Doc. "I just took Faith and the kids to the hospital."

"You got in?"

Bosco shrugged irritably. "Yeah, we found a spot."

"Mmm ... not such a hot place to be the last I saw ..." Doc coughed hard and winced. "Most of the guys from the firehouse are either dead or they've run ... I don't think anyone can get out of New York, though ... not yet anyway ... you know ... I don't really see how you could ... maybe if you waited ... waited for the soldiers to die ..."

_Jesus, Doc, do you maybe want to shut the fuck up?_

Apparently he didn't. "You know, Bosco, I keep thinking ... I keep thinking about Sarah. You know ... Dr. Morales. Remember her? I blew it there, Bosco, I really blew it ... why didn't I see ... you have to seize the moment, y'know ...? Where is she now? That's what I keep thinking, I keep wondering if she's got this thing, this flu ..." 

"We're here," Bosco said tersely, pulling over to the curb. 

_And thank the Good Lawd for that._

He looked uncertainly at Doc. "You comin'?"

Doc lifted his head with what seemed a great amount of effort. "Yeah ... uh ... lemme get some stuff from the back ... the back of the bus ... you go on ahead up ... I'll be right behind you."

Bosco exhaled wearily and threw open the door. 

***

  
  


The song was _Superman_ by Eminem and it was threatening to shake Cruz' building to its foundations; someone had left their stereo on and cranked to maximum. The light fixtures were rattling in the ceiling and the doors were rattling in their frames. The walls hummed with it. Bosco walked slowly along the hall, his heart pounding in time with the music, which grew louder as he neared Cruz' apartment. 

There was a man lying dead on the floor; Bosco had to step over his outstretched legs to get by. Again, he told himself he wouldn't look down, and again that was exactly what he did. The man's neck was swollen with superflu and the beginnings of decomposition. His death had left his face twisted into a grimace of pain and what might have been rage, eyes wide and glassy and deranged. He seemed to snarl up at Bosco as he passed, as if angry at such a disrespectful intrusion.

Bosco approached Cruz' door, realizing the music was coming directly from the neighboring apartment; it thrummed up through his legs and loosened his guts. Dimly he realized that the last time he'd been here had been after the fire, after the death of her sister, that honest attempt he'd made to offer some comfort, some support. The honest attempt which had gotten him one hell of a wild ride and a heap of trouble ... 

_She used you. Like a big ol' piece of Grade-A meat. Nothing more. You said it yourself._

He pushed that away and reached out to knock -

- and saw the door was already ajar. The entire doorknob and lock assembly had been shot away, and Bosco felt a cold, razor-sharp knife of fear and apprehension slide into his belly. 

"Cruz?" he called softly, drawing his gun.

No answer. He pushed lightly on the door, and as it swung open the smell hit him in the face like a sour, wet rag, a tacky mix of puke and sweat and human waste tinged with a thin layer of Vick's Vapo-rub, something that might have been lemon-flavored cough drops, and the pungent smell of hard liquor.

"First jagoff I see who isn't the rightful owner and occupant of this apartment is gonna be breathin' through his forehead," he barked as he went inside. 

He remembered this apartment as a warm, earthy place, as sexy as Cruz herself. There had been scented candles everywhere, and he remembered that after they had finally satisfied each other, he'd wondered about that. Were the candles part of some personal ritual over her sister's death, or were they a usual thing for her? He'd kind of hoped they were part of the norm for her, perhaps indicating another layer of Cruz' personality he wouldn't have guessed at, that maybe the cold, ruthless Anti-Crime cop was only a mask after all.

All of that was gone now. The looters had been here, perhaps even the same gang he'd passed on the way over, and they'd done a number on the place. What they hadn't taken, they'd smashed. The furniture that was left was overturned, seemingly just for the sake of it. A mirror lay shattered in the middle of the floor, and it was one Bosco recognized immediately. He wasn't likely to forget it; he'd cracked that mirror himself. When Cruz had thrown herself on him, he'd slammed right back into that mirror and broken it, and now the looters had finished the job.

Cruz herself was face-down on the floor just outside the kitchen. Bosco rushed over to her, unconsciously running a cold cop's eye over the scene. There was no blood, no sign of gunshot wounds, and she didn't appear to have been attacked. She was in her bathrobe, and the way she was positioned and the direction she faced suggested that she'd been on her way to the kitchen and had simply collapsed. 

He knelt hesitantly next to her. She was still alive, her entire body throbbing with an intense, volcanic heat, her breathing shallow and difficult and clotted with phlegm. He leaned in closer and saw she'd been attacked after all; she had a nasty gash on her right temple, her cheek streaked with long-dried blood. One of the jagoffs had dealt her a kick to the side of the head, probably only as an afterthought. They probably would have raped her as well, if not for the fact she looked like a corpse and smelled like an open sewer. Bosco's face darkened. Oh, to have been able to catch the bastards in the act! If only he could have caught them and made them sorry they'd ever come within ten miles of her ...

And where the hell was Doc, anyway?

He wasn't about to stand around and wait. He gripped Cruz' shoulders and gently began to lift her. There was a horrible, thin ripping sound, like weak velcro; her hair was stuck to the carpet by a caked mix of dried vomit and blood. Bosco winced and pulled her up, throwing her right arm around his shoulders and wrapping his own arm around her waist. As he stood upright, Cruz came alive.

"_What are you doin' to my sister!_" she screamed in a thick, curdled voice. "What ... what are you ... sister ... no ... stop ... fire ... fire ... too hot ..." 

He dragged her across the room, holding his breath at the stench of her, that gruesome fever-heat seeming to sink right through his clothes, into his bones, throbbing in time with _Superman_, which still played at top-volume in the next apartment.

_Oooooh, feel that!_ Richard Farrell's voice crooned gleefully in his head. _She's just a-full o' that good old Latin passion!_

"Fire ..." Cruz burbled, her breath hot and sour and reeking of alcohol. "Fire's too hot ... too hot ..."

"Shut up," he moaned aloud at both of them, yanking her along, her bare feet dragging on the carpet. He took her into the bathroom and dumped her none too gently in her own bathtub. He needed to cool her off. He had no idea if that was the right thing to do or not, but since Doc was taking his sweet fucking time, he wasn't about to let her suffer like this. He turned the taps. 

There was a rusty groan somewhere deep in the walls, but no water. 

"What the hell?" he murmured, twisting the knobs all the way around. 

Still nothing.

"_Aw, what the hell!?_" he howled. There was a small, empty clothes hamper at the foot of the tub, and Bosco kicked it, kicked it _hard_ and smashed it in. "_What the HELL!?_"

_Stop being a fuckin' baby. Go to the kitchen and get some ice._

Bosco ran to the kitchen, threw open the freezer, and found nothing inside but two half-empty ice-cube trays, a frozen chunk of chicken breast, and three Stouffer's microwave dinners. He cursed and scooped up everything. 

On the way back he stopped by her bedroom, intending to get some of her clothes to wrap the ice in, and realized they'd done it in here as well. The floor in the living room first, but after a few hours they'd gotten their wind back and they'd fucked in her bed, too. And that was what you had to call it, too - _fucked_. You couldn't pretty it up into anything else.

Now this place was a sickroom. Much like it had been at Faith's, a table on one side of the bed was arranged with a haphazard collection of over-the-counter cold remedies. Tylenol, Tylenol Cough & Cold, Vick's, Halls' cough drops. There was a half-full bottle of Buckley's cough syrup next to two empty ones, and Bosco saw a spoon lying on the floor as if tossed away; eventually Cruz had simply resorted to drinking the medicine straight from the bottle. And next to that, for when all else failed, was a bottle of Jack Daniels Tennessee Whiskey. 

And next to _that_, there was that baggie of cocaine she'd always carried with her. That handy little bit of leverage.

Bosco picked it up; it was still sealed and he didn't think she'd used any. But the fact that it was here, left out in the open, was testament to how desperate she'd become. She'd been _thinking_ about it. He swallowed hard and tossed the baggie back on the table.

And suddenly, unexpectedly, he was angry at Faith Yokas. Faith had called Cruz a snake. A sociopath. Faith had talked about her like she wasn't even human, just a cold, unfeeling monster, and yet look at this; this was the room of someone in pain, someone trying to make herself comfortable and not understanding why it wasn't working, someone just wanting some relief, to rest comfortably. 

And she'd been alone. All this time, she'd been alone here.

Bosco gathered the pathetic collection of ice cubes and food, took a few of Cruz' shirts from the bureau across the room, and went back to the bathroom. 

He wrapped the ice and the lump of frozen chicken and the microwave dinners, placing them around her as best he could. Cruz was muttering, most of it in Spanish. Her skin, formerly that healthy, sexy bronze, was now dusky gray. Bosco wished bitterly and petulantly that Faith could see her like this, could see Cruz' bedroom and that sad little row of failed remedies, the baggie of cocaine she'd thought of using to ease her suffering. 

He sat down on the toilet seat next to the tub, put his head back against the tile and closed his eyes. He was becoming more and more sure Doc wasn't coming. The stereo in the other apartment droned on; why couldn't the looters have looted the goddam thing?

_Superman_ ended and a new song came on, one Bosco actually found vaguely familiar:

  
  


_"Ba-by, you can tell me if anyone can_

_Baby, can you dig your man?_

_He's a righteous man_

_Baby, can you dig your man?"_

  
  


The car. That was it. That was the song that had come blaring out of the radio when he'd flipped it on that night, that night Cruz had ended up wanting to kill Dougie Francis. 

The night he'd almost _let_ her.

Bosco looked over at her. Cruz's head lolled bonelessly over her left shoulder, lips moving faintly as she whispered, murmured, talked to herself and to people who weren't there. English for a little while, and then abruptly it would turn to Spanish, then back again, then sometimes a slurred, overlapping mix of both.

"No Papa ..." she muttered as he watched her. "I won't ... I won't ... she's dead to me ... not my sister ... let her die ..." Cruz' face screwed into a scowl of petulant rage and she rasped fiercely, "_Let her die, I'm through ... I'm through protecting her from herself ..._"

Bosco took two of the ice cubes and melted them in a blue tank-top he'd taken from her room. Then, almost tenderly, he did his best to wash the blood and vomit from her face. Whatever Cruz was, whatever she had been, it didn't matter now. As far as he was concerned she'd been a good cop, regardless of her methods, even regardless of the fact she probably _would_ have shot Dougie Francis in cold blood that night. And it wouldn't have mattered to Bosco if she had. All that mattered to him now was making sure she died with at least some dignity.

As he leaned over her, her eyes focused on him. 

"Hey, handsome," she wheezed, and she was actually smiling a bit now. "Do ... do somethin' for me ... would ya?"

Bosco nodded and smiled back. "Anything."

"Tell ... tell that bitch Cassie ... you tell that bitch that I'll kill her if she ever ... if she ever tells anyone ... about the money I took ..." Her dark eyes bored into him from their sunken sockets. "Right?"

Bosco nodded. "Sure. Sure thing. I'll tell her."

He hadn't the slightest idea what she was talking about.

"Good," Cruz muttered, lowering her head. "Good ... you're a good ... friend, James ... a good friend ..."

Bosco hated himself a little for what he did next, but the plain fact was that he didn't want her to die not knowing who he was. Again it was a particularly vulgar sort of selfishness, and again he didn't care. He wanted Cruz to know that he was there for her at the end. 

"Cruz," he whispered, putting a gentle hand on her cheek and turning her head to face him again. "Cruz, it's Boscorelli, not James. Maurice Boscorelli. Remember? Remember Anti-Crime?"

Cruz looked at him blankly, eyes muddy and stupid. 

Then, suddenly, she shrank away from him, face twisting into a mask of perfect terror.

"_The devil_," she whimpered, fat tears forming at the corners of her eyes and rolling down her pasty cheeks. "The devil, the devil is coming, the man with no face, oh please no, oh please no, he's coming to get me, don't let him get me, _please_ ... please no ... the devil ... the man with no face ... _the dark man_ ..." It was a breathless, sobbing litany, the words tripping all over each other. Finally she fell back against the tub, exhausted, and began to cough weakly.

Bosco recoiled a bit. There had been something about her eyes just then, a cold clarity ... she'd _known_ him, he was sure. In that brief moment, she'd known exactly who he was.

_Bullshit she knew. She's out of it. She's out of it _for good.

In the other apartment, _Baby, Can You Dig Your Man_ came to an end. After about two minutes of silence a voice suddenly came on, a young man's voice, unsteady and broken with tears. It wasn't a CD over there, it seemed; it was a radio station, and it was loud enough to be intelligible even through the walls. 

"I hope ... hope you all enjoyed the music ..." the young man on the radio said with a high, hysterical laugh. "I've been here at the KRPO station for ... for about two hours now, and I don't ... uh ... I'm trying to figure how to work all this equipment ... uh ... I didn't work here, you see, I was a ... uh ... just a computer tech ..."

The self-appointed DJ coughed and went on, "I've been ... uh ... trying to get some useful information here, but it isn't easy ... it seems that all routes out of the city are jammed up pretty tight ... those of you who aren't sick ... if there are any of you ... don't bother with any of the major highways ... I think most of the Army posts are abandoned or dead now ... uh ... there's a paper in front of me that says the death-toll is officially listed as two thousand people across North America, but a friend of mine worked at the New York Times and he said ... he said ... oh God ..." The young man swallowed audibly and suddenly screamed through his tears, "_THERE ARE OVER ONE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE DEAD IN THE U.S. ALONE! AND ... and_ ... and ... I have to ... I can't stay here anymore ... I gotta go, gotta get out of here ..." -he uttered another of those high, hysterical giggles- "Show's over folks ... show's fucking over ..."

Sitting next to Cruz, Bosco began to weep, and it was a hollow and pointless sound in the stuffy little bathroom. Cruz took no notice of him, caught irrevocably in the grip of her delirium. She was giving that little bug one hell of a fight, and he realized that he wished her dead. Wished she would just die and let him be free of her, free of any lingering responsibility to her.

He closed his eyes and wept, and gradually slipped into an uneasy sleep.

  
  


***

He woke up screaming. His leg jerked spastically and kicked the side of the bathtub, and he lost his balance and fell off the toilet seat onto the floor, stiff joints and numb muscles howling in protest.

Morning sunlight washed into the bathroom from the small window set high in the far wall, and Bosco looked blearily down at his watch; 10:34 AM. Jesus. He'd gone to sleep at about .. what? One-thirty AM, or thereabouts.

Bosco sat up and ran his hands over his face, feeling the slick, cold sweat there. The dreams had been pretty bad, but most of the details were already dissipating, and he wasn't about to argue with that. Something about corn, fighting blindly through tall stalks of corn ... something about rats, rats in the corn, crawling up his legs, gnawing on his ankles ...

He shook it away and turned to Cruz.

Cruz was looking back at him, her eyes wide, lips slightly parted.

"Hey," he murmured. "How you holdin' up?"

Nothing. Not even a blink. 

_Oh shit._

"Cruz?" he asked softly, heavy, acidic dread rising in his chest. He knew what he was looking at, he'd been expecting this, but ... but he still didn't want it to be true.

_And maybe it isn't_, he thought desperately. She'd fooled him before, after all, that day in the hospital after her sister's death. He'd found her at the end of a quiet hallway, sitting next to a window, perfectly still. She hadn't responded to anything he'd said, only staring blankly at him, not so much as a muscle twitching in her face. He remembered that for a brief moment he'd wondered if she was dead, if she'd died of some weird kind of delayed-reaction smoke inhalation, or had somehow managed to kill herself without leaving a mark. 

But that had only been Sergeant Cruz being Sergeant Cruz, the great enigma, the great emotional puzzle. This was a lot simpler.

Sergeant Cruz was dead.

"Cruz?" he said again, his voice very small. He put a hand on her shoulder and shook her gently.

A fly crawled out of her open mouth, trundled halfway up her cheek, and did a kind of shuffling hop-skip the rest of the way to land directly on one glazed and unseeing eyeball, where it stayed. 

Bosco didn't quite manage to stifle the cry of revulsion as he recoiled from her, scrambling to his feet and backing up against the wall. 

Cruz' dead eyes seemed to follow him. 

_And another door closes_, he thought colorlessly. 

Slowly, without taking his eyes off her, he reached up, grabbed the plastic shower curtain, and yanked it off its rings. As he began to tuck it around her, he made one abortive attempt at brushing her eyes closed. Then he remembered the fly, the way it had sat there right on her iris, rubbing its little legs together as if contemplating the huge and wonderful meal spread before it. 

Bosco pulled the curtain over her face and stood up quickly. 

_I should say something now. A few words. _

But he could think of absolutely nothing, and with that came the puzzling realization that he didn't even know what he was supposed to feel right now. He hadn't known Cruz _that_ well, and he couldn't rightly say that he had _loved_ her. _Lust_, yes, but it would be fair to say any lust he'd had for her was pretty much a thing of the past. 

And so what was really left?

_Nothing_, Farrell's voice chuckled softly. _Face it, buddy; she meant no more to you than you did to her. She was a piece of ass. One you could go out and spend quality time with bullying jagoff drug dealers, but still a piece of ass. That's all._

Bosco shook his head adamantly. "No," he said aloud. "She was a good cop." He looked at the corpse in its plastic shroud and jabbed a finger at it. "You hear me, Cruz? You were a good cop ... and ... and you don't deserve this. You didn't deserve to die this way, and you deserve better than to be left here like this."

__Cruz didn't seem to have anything to say to that.

Bosco turned and stalked out of the bathroom, through the living room, and out the door, without once looking back. He started back down the hall, barely noticing the dead man he'd stepped over earlier. Glassy, white-hot rage was burning in his chest, righteous and sweet.

And in his head the thought began to take shape, his new Mantra, his new _purpose_, flashing in the center of his mind like a neon sign: Somebody was going to pay for this, all of it. 

Maurice Boscorelli was going to see to it somebody paid in blood. 


	7. Chapter 7 June 26 27 Day 5 6

I see that in the Chapter 6 intro I forgot the customary thanks for the reviews. Sorry 'bout that :) And thanks for the reviews!

One chapter left to go after this one. I've also been toying with the idea of adding an "Intermission" chapter between 4 and 5, which would deal with some of the other characters - namely, what happened to Taylor, Sully, Ty and how Jimmy came by the gun ... maybe something about Miguel White and Vernon Marks. Tell me what you think! 

And it seems that at last we all know Cruz' first name - Maritza. Comes a little late, huh? Oh well. Anyway, on to Chapter 7: Bosco makes a final promise to Faith, one he may not be able to keep ...

* * *

**Chapter 7**

June 26-27

Day 5-6

  
  


"You son of a bitch," Bosco breathed.

Doc was gone. Bosco had assumed that the paramedic had passed out, or perhaps just finally keeled over dead. But when he came out of Cruz' building, the bus was gone. Doc had taken off. 

Bosco would have liked to believe it had been intentional, that Doc had snuck away. He wanted to believe that so that he would have the luxury of being angry at the man. But after seeing what Cruz had become, Bosco had to admit that it was more likely Doc simply hadn't known what he was doing. He'd been pretty bad last night, and he could have gone into his own delirium. Perhaps he ended up thinking he was out on a call or something. For all Bosco knew, he might have hallucinated Dr. Morales running naked down the street and went chasing after her. Who knew? It couldn't be helped now.

He looked around at the empty, quiet street; he could probably walk back to where he'd left his Mustang, but it would be a fifteen minute trip at least, and God only knew what he might run across. 

There was a blue Honda Civic parked across the street. Bosco walked over to it, leaned down and looked in the window. No keys, of course, but he knew all the tricks. He smashed out the driver's side window with the butt of his rifle and started hot-wiring. 

As he worked, he found himself going over and over Cruz' death in his mind. It had been so simple, so dry and unspectacular. She must have gone to sleep, her body deciding that now was as good a time as any to simply throw in the towel, and she just slipped away. For some absurd reason that struck him as sad. It would have been more Cruz' style, he thought with a sour smile, to go down in a hail of gunfire.

_Or maybe she choked to death_, he thought grimly. _Maybe her throat swelled up so much she couldn't breathe anymore. Or maybe she choked on her own puke. Pleasant thought, isn't it? Thrashing and gasping for air ... _

_Jesus, just stop it. It's over now. I made sure she didn't die alone, and that's all that matters. She's dead. Let it go_.

But he'd left her there. Right after saying out loud that she deserved more, he'd left her to rot in that bathtub. How long would she lie there? Five years? Ten? Twenty? Ha! Think more along the lines of one hundred, five hundred, a _thousand_. The decay process would be wet and spongy at first, _oozy_, breeding maggots and worms ... then eventually she would dry up, her bones gradually petrifying and turning to powder as the building disintegrated and fell in around her ...

Bosco groaned as he got the Civic started, and to anyone listening it would be a hard, pained sound, the sound of a man who has just found out the ache in his gut means he's carrying a bouncing baby tumor somewhere in the maze of his intestines. He slipped behind the wheel with a long, shaky breath. Yeah, so, okay, Maritza Cruz deserved better than to be left to molder in a shower curtain. But things, as they say, were tough all over. For all he knew, Faith could be dead by now. 

_While you were attending to Cruz_, Richard Farrell seemed to chide him. _Tsk-tsk. Wouldn't that be peachy? You've known Faith for ... what? Nine years? Ten? And Cruz for what? A couple of months? And who did you think took priority, who did you go to, who did you help? Faith Yokas, the honest cop and loving wife and mother? Nooooo. You left her and went to help a murderous, corrupt bitch who had all the morals of a death-adder. _

_Sort of speaks volumes about you, doesn't it, partner?_

"Shut up," Bosco snarled ... and felt an immediate, unsettling shame. It seemed that more and more he was talking _out loud_ to the voices in his head. 

Shit, could he really be losing it? Like, _for real_, in a _clinical_ sense, could he actually be losing his mind?

... No. No, probably not.

"Stress," he said with a half-hearted shrug as he wove deftly around a smoking three-car pileup. "I'm tellin' ya, nobody knows what stress is until they live through the end of all mankind. Fuck yeah. _That's_ stressed, my friend. No shame in it."

And besides, Faith had been relatively okay when he'd left her. She'd still be alive, and he could ... he could see her off, could be there for her and Charlie and Emily, be there for them as he had been there for Cruz ...

_Ooh, you're just a regular _saint_, ain't you? Runnin' around dispensing all this loving kindness to your dying buddies. Must really tucker you out._

"Shut up" Bosco muttered again, this time not even realizing he'd spoken. 

He _would_ go back and check on Faith, he _would_ stay with her until the end came. That was just what he'd do. So what? So fucking what? Where was the harm in it? It was the best he could do, and it was _all_ he could do. He couldn't do much else. 

There wasn't, he thought with acrid rage, a whole lot he could do about any of it.

_You can make somebody pay._

There was that, yes, but that was for later. Somebody would pay, somehow. It was something he knew _had_ to be, there needed to be at least one thin strand of sanity left in the world if he was to survive in it, and that strand had to be that sense of order, of _balance_. Somebody had to pay.

And it wasn't just idle fantasy, either. There was some part of him, he realized with excitement, that was starting to get a sense of how it could be achieved. He was beginning to believe the answer might lie in the strange and vivid dreams he'd been having lately, just since the epidemic began. Yes, dreams ... there had been that brief period about two years ago in which he'd had a series of odd, disturbing dreams and had become very interested in dream interpretation. It was a pity that he'd lost interest soon after, because it might have helped him now. At the moment it was like a puzzle, really ... one of those puzzles where you gradually uncover a picture, a piece at time.

It occurred to him that maybe this was all delusion, his overtaxed brain feeding him false hope, perhaps even another sign of impending insanity ... but he didn't think so. He really didn't think so at all. And he was patient. If the answers were hidden in his subconscious, it would become clear. In time, he knew, it would all become clear. 

And it wouldn't be long before he discovered he was right.

***

  
  


They were gone.

Bosco stood looking stupidly at that little corner in the examination room where he'd left Faith and her kids. Not a trace remained of them, not even a castoff blanket, and yet everything else about the room looked more or less unchanged.

"What the _fuck_?" he murmured softly. He turned and began to stumble blindly down the hall, half tripping through the sea of bodies, no longer noticing or caring if he stepped on an outstretched arm or foot. He looked desperately into this room and that as he passed, seeing only more bodies, but he couldn't find them, couldn't find her, and he began to panic and call out to her, and soon he was screaming her name, voice echoing off the walls of this dead and silent place, this hospital that was now and forever a tomb -

His sleeve snagged on something, and when he looked down he saw it was a hand. A hand belonging to a dying soldier who lay forgotten on a gurney in the middle of the hall.

"McMasters!" the soldier croaked, his neck swollen and purple. "McMasters ordered us! We didn't want to! But we blew the fuckin' building up! No choice! Shoot us if we didn't, they said, and job's worth doin' right if you ain't got a choice! So we blew it good, blew that motherfucker reeeeeeel good-"

Before he completely knew what he was doing, Bosco punched him. _Hard_. He felt the man's nose compress against his fist, felt it break, watched it burst. Blood exploded around his hand, and he was fairly certain he also felt something in the soldier's neck give with a low pop. The soldier's arms and legs jerked once and then went still. 

_He was dead anyway. _

Right, spare it not another thought. Bosco reached the end of the hallway and collapsed on his haunches, burying his face in his hands. The hospital was huge and he could spend hours doing a room-to-room search. Hours ... or with the sheer number of bodies, perhaps days. 

But he knew she had to be alive. If Faith and her kids were dead, they'd still be where he'd left them. The fact that they were gone must mean they were alive and well enough to move under their own power. And they wouldn't have left the hospital, of that he was sure. They'd just moved to find a better spot. 

There was a sign scotch-taped to the wall in front of him, hand-lettered in blue Magic Marker:

  
  


ALL ROOMS ON ALL FLOORS FULL

NEW PATIENTS ARE TO BE BROUGHT TO CAFETERIA - JUNE 24

  
  


As good a place as any to start.

The tables in the cafeteria had been pressed into service as makeshift beds, the plastic chairs stacked haphazardly against the walls. Bosco realized that this place had been the last line of organized defense before the staggering speed of the epidemic and the dying hospital staff combined to overwhelm the place entirely.

_Pointless_, he thought miserably as he began to circle the room, reluctantly drawing sheets back from bloated and discolored faces. _Pointless ... I'll never find her. I'm too late. She died. She died and I left her to be with Cruz ... I'll never find her now._

But he did. He found Faith in the third row, second table from the left, and he was so surprised that he almost dismissed her and moved on, figuring he'd mistaken someone else. 

But it _was_ her. No doubt about it.

And it looked as if dear ol' Captain Trips had come back on Faith with one hell of a vengeance. She looked even worse than she had the day before, and Bosco was once again darkly amazed at the incredible speed of the disease. If he had read Alex Taylor's fact sheet all the way through, he would have known that the superflu mutated almost constantly, a shifting antigen that simply attacked the human body until every last line of defense was exhausted. Every time the immune system came up with the right antibodies to fight the virus, ol' Trips simply changed slightly and the whole miserable process started over. 

Faith's body had made one last enormous strike against the virus, which had resulted in a few hours of slight recovery. But Trips came back. Trips always came back, and it was Trips that Bosco began to think of as his target, Trips that he began to personalize in his mind for lack of anyone else to blame. The little fucker had rolled effortlessly over everyone he knew, everyone he respected, everyone he loved, and he had killed them all ... and now Trips was back to work on Faith Yokas. 

And by the look of things, he was almost finished with her.

"Faith," he whispered, gently nudging her shoulder, and the grim, surreal parallel to the way it had been with Cruz was not lost on him.

Faith stirred and gradually swam up out of a tormented sleep. Bosco wasn't expecting much from her, and wondered why he was bothering to wake her at all. He expected this to match the experience with Cruz in every way, right down to her state of mind. He could feel that same explosive fever-heat coming from her, her breathing shallow and wet and thick, and it seemed cruel to wake her just for ... for what? Some selfish sense of a clear conscience?

Faith's eyes focused on him, and she smiled. "Bss ... Bosco?"

Bosco nodded and returned the smile, but he was suddenly very cold inside. "Hey there, Yokas. I hear you been breakin' balls around here."

Faith laughed, or tried to; it was more of a thin sigh. "I'm a model ... model patient." She reached up and brushed her fingertips over his cheek, and he had to make a conscious effort not to recoil from that spongy, clammy touch. "You're gettin' the ... the five o'clock shadow there, Bos."

Bosco took her hand gently, feeling the stubble on his cheek. Shit, how many days _had_ it been since he'd run a razor over his face? Two or three? "Yeah," he murmured with a wan smile. "I'm a mess."

"How was Cruz?"

Bosco paused, and he discovered there was still some of that old sensitivity there, that feeling of needing to be on the defensive, of steeling himself for some smartass comment about his Anti-Crime girlfriend. There was, he found, a perverse nostalgia to it; he almost _wanted_ to hear Faith lash out. A good old-fashioned argument over trust and betrayal and Cruz would mean things were normal again.

"She's dead, Faith," he said after a moment.

Faith patted his hand. "I'm sorry, Bosco."

And the sorrow in her tone was so unaffected, so _real._ He felt tears stinging the corners of his eyes. 

"Charlie's gone," Faith murmured, closing her eyes. "He ... died about an hour ... an hour after you left ... there was a doctor ... did you see him?"

Bosco shook his head. "I haven't seen anybody, Faith."

"He was sick himself, but he brought me here to the caf ... Emily ... Emily's gone too, I think, but ... I don't remember when ... I don't remember ... when it happened ..." 

"Easy now," he said, swallowing a lump in his throat. "Easy ... "

But she wasn't crying; she only smiled and patted his hand again. "It's okay, Bos ... I think ... I think I'm okay with it now ..." Her smile widened, assured and peaceful. "I'll be with them soon."

"Naw," he said with a forced nonchalance that was really quite ridiculous. "No, you're fightin' it, Faith, fightin' _so hard_, and you'll ..."

He trailed off as he saw the change in her expression, and felt her hand tighten almost painfully on his.

"You have a _gift_," she said, and her voice was suddenly strong, clear, almost normal. "You have been given a _gift_, you understand that, Bosco? _Immunity_. You _survived_ ..."

Bosco tried to speak and found he could only nod.

"Don't throw it away," she said, and _now_ she began to cry. "If you ever respected me, if you ever cared about me, about everything we stood for, don't throw it away. _Don't go to him_, _Bosco_."

He felt suddenly very uneasy. That coldness in his center had been diminishing, but now it came back on him, came back _hard_. "Don't go to who, Faith?"

"The dark man," she murmured.

Bosco's blood froze. 

_Cruz ... didn't she say the same thing ...? Yes, she did, she said the same thing ... the exact same fucking thing ... _

Bosco looked down at his hands and saw they were trembling. In a voice that seemed very distant, he heard himself say, "I ... I don't understand, Faith ..."

"_You DO!_" she croaked, and it was almost loud enough to qualify as a yell. She winced at the pain it caused but pushed on, her tears making her almost unintelligible. "You ... you _can't do it_, Bosco. Everything we fought for ... all those years ... he represents everything we stood against, so don't you _dare_ throw it all away ..."

He was marginally aware that he was crying along with her now. "_I don't know what you mean, Faith!_"

But he did. On some level, he knew exactly what she meant. 

"Promise me," she said hoarsely. "Please, Bosco, promise me you won't give in to him ..."

"_I promise!_" he shouted. "_I promise I won't go to the dark man, Faith!_"

She smiled and squeezed his hand again. "Mmm ... you have to grow up, Bos ... you have to let the past go ... you're still ... still so much that little boy ... so powerless ... helpless ..."

"Stop it," he rasped. It was barely audible.

"I want you to know ... I always would have been there for you ... no matter what, I always ... I always respected you, Bosco ... I loved you like a brother ... no matter what I might have said ... but you have to grow up now ..."

"Stop," he moaned, covering his face with his hands. "Please, stop."

"There's a storm coming," Faith Yokas muttered as she slipped into unconsciousness for the last time. "_His_ storm ... stay strong ... stay ........ "

__"Faith ..." he whispered, but he could see she was going now, slipping away. Her breathing, jagged and wet and rattling, quickened. She began to convulse, back arching in the bed, hands clawing the air, the short breaths turning into a series of thick, choking barks.

Bosco watched helplessly, watched as her chest rose ... fell ... rose ... fell ....

...rose ...

... fell ...

... and stilled.

He took her wrist. Felt for a pulse. Found none.

"Aw, Faith," he sobbed. He kissed her forehead and put his head down on her shoulder. "Aw, Faith ... Faith ..."

And how long, he would think later, did he sit with her? Measure the time and compare it to that spent with Cruz. It was so easy, wasn't it? So neat, so perfect. His two partners, his two worlds, his two choices. How conveniently clear and uncomplicated things had turned out, how easy to gauge his own priorities, how easy it was to look into himself. 

After about a half an hour, he stood up drew the sheet up over Faith's head, and then he simply left her. There was nothing else to do. Any attempt at ritualizing it, at trying to create a paltry little funeral would be worthless, even insulting to her and to himself. Just a weak charade, a farce. Funerals were staged not for the benefit of the dead but the living, and that assumed that the living needed comfort. Bosco needed none, and Faith was dead; what happened now no longer mattered to her. 

So he left her just as he had left Cruz, and time would take her just as it would take Cruz ... as it would take Doc, and Carlos, and Kim, and everyone else. As it would take the hospital, the streets, the city. _Everything._

The last door on his past had been closed, and the world had moved on.

***

  
  


The corn, the corn is everywhere and it's too high, too high, and there's no way out. Maurice Boscorelli's just a city boy, and he can't find his way out, he runs and runs and never finds the way out, but he can hear singing, somebody's playing an old acoustic guitar and singing old-time, deep-South Bible-thumpin' hymns. _Oh what a friend we have in Jesus_ and so on and so forth.

Bosco's not interested in having a friend in Jesus; he just wants out of this goddam hateful sweet-stinking corn. The singing is behind him, or it's in front, or it's from the left, the right, no matter what way he goes it's just more corn, more corn, and eventually he even starts to laugh, because getting lost in corn is kind of ludicrous when you think about it, even if you're certain you'll die here, running in circles like a rat ... like rats ...

... and finally, suddenly, he breaks through, and he's looking at what has to be the oldest woman he's ever seen, an old black woman-

_(African American_, he hears Faith Yokas correct him with her customary exasperation, and for a moment Bosco can see her as clear as day, sitting next to him in an RMP in full uniform, a cup of coffee in her hand. She's _healthy_, and she's watching him with that characteristic mix of dry irritation and motherly concern. It's good to see her again, and he suddenly realizes that she's beautiful, in her own way. He never saw that in her before, and he smiles ... __

_But it's wrong, it's wrong because Faith's dead, she's _dead ... )

- an old _African American_ woman with an equally old guitar, sitting on the back porch of an equally old house. Her singing, rusty but not at all unpleasant, stops abruptly when she sees him break cover, and her face twists with a rage that he might have found almost comical at one time in his life. She jabs a bony finger at him.

"He can't offer you _nothin_', Maurice Louis Boscorelli!" the old woman says sternly. "His promises are hollow! He's the father of lies!"

Bosco feels sick rage well up in him, feels his lips trembling, pulling down at the corners like a little kid about to pout - or cry. "_Somebody has to pay!_"

The old woman laughs bitterly. "Ain't _nobody_ gonna pay for this! Nobody 'cept _you_, unless you give up this foolishness!"

Bosco shakes his head violently, suddenly and viciously hating her, hating the smug, righteous arrogance in her gaze. He remembers Faith in her hospital bed, Cruz in her bathtub, Doc and Carlos and Kim and Jimmy, his _mother_, and _how dare_ the old bitch sit there and say that nobody's going to pay for them all, that no price can ever be exacted for such a monstrous affront? 

He drops to his knees and screams at the sky, screams at the top of his lungs, throat burning, tears streaming down his face. "_SOMEBODY'S GOTTA PAY! SOMEBODY _WILL_ PAY!_"

"_Rats in the corn!_" the old woman shrieks, and in that same moment he feels them, and then he looks down and _sees_ them; hundreds of fat, hairy brown rats crawling over his legs, he's _kneeling_ in them, they're crawling up his legs, working their way towards his belly, where they will no doubt rip him open and make a nest in the raw and bleeding cavity - 

- Bosco screams - 

- and now, abruptly, _blessedly_, he's back home, in New York. Ah, New York, New York, never has it been so beautiful to this here city boy. 

He stands up slowly. The rats are gone, the corn, the old woman. He nods, the fear evaporating. This is dream. He'd kind of known it was a dream all along, and he feels a bit stupid.

He looks down and sees he's now wearing a dress uniform, immaculate and perfect, brass buttons glinting in the clean, early summer sun. He smiles. The city is dead, and he can hear the wind blowing through the empty streets, between the buildings, making strange, tuneless sounds. This is the way it is now, New York, the big tomb, the big haunted house ...

Then he sees the car, sees it and hears it in the same moment; it's at the end of the street and bearing down fast, a big wine-colored Crown Victoria coming right at him, doing at least a hundred. 

Bosco merely stands on the curb and waits for it, unconcerned. He's still smiling.

The Crown Vic comes to a screaming, snarling halt no more than a few feet from him, smoke belching from the wheel-wells. The bitter stench of burning rubber fills his nostrils. Bosco's smile remains - he knows this car. He's been in this car plenty of times, an unmarked squad car registered to the Anti-Crime unit of the 55th Precinct.

The driver's side window rolls down and a head pokes out, one Bosco recognizes immediately. The fierce, burning eyes. The big, sunny ol' fuck-the-world grin. 

Bosco is unable to suppress his own grin, a grin that closely mirrors the one worn by the driver of the car. But _unlike_ the driver of the car, Bosco's grin is one borne of relief and happiness and an overwhelming sense of power, of coming home, of meeting his destiny. 

"Farrell!" Bosco cries cheerfully. "How you doin', man?"

Richard Farrell's grin seems to widen, if such a thing is possible. "The name's Flagg these days, son. Randall Flagg. But to answer your question, I'm just great. Fine and dandy like sour candy."

Farrell - sorry, _Flagg_ - steps out of the car. He's wearing the same clothes he had on the day Bosco imagined him on the streetlight; old, scuffed cowboy boots, jeans, and a denim jacket over a simple checked work-shirt. An Anti-Crime badge hangs around his neck on a chain, and there are two buttons on the lapels of his jacket. A yellow smiley-face on the left; on the right, a button depicting a cartoon pig in a police officer's cap, a cartoon pig which has been shot between the eyes. _How's Your Pork?_ is written underneath in stylized bloody letters.

Bosco's eyes flicker over to the car. A decaying corpse is propped up in the passenger seat, sitting in a humming cloud of flies. The corpse is lipless, noseless and eyeless, its skin blistered and peeling, but Bosco knows exactly who it is by its clothes, by the remaining clumps of matted black hair, by the badge hanging around its neck. 

It's Cruz, of course.

Flagg follows his gaze and nods. "Such a shame that dear Maritza didn't make the final cut - she would have fit in quite well. But, no use crying over spilled milk and all that. On to more important matters, matters of the living. We got a lot of work ahead of us, Bosco my man. Come on down to Vegas if you want to get in on the action." Flagg is now beaming paternally. "And I do believe I still owe you a beer, if I'm not mistaken."

"You sure as hell do!" Bosco says amicably, and Randall Flagg, the dark man, laughs and claps him heartily on the shoulder.

"We'll get 'em all, Bosco!" Flagg hollers as he gets back into the car. "All the jagoffs! We'll make 'em pay, you and me! We'll be top of the fucking world, and we'll make somebody pay for 'em all. We'll crucify their sorry asses, line those motherfuckers up on crosstrees all the way down the length of Nevada!"

"Damn straight!" Bosco yells back, almost panting with the anticipation of it. Yes, crucifixion. He can see it. The world still had more than enough jagoffs running around in it ... but not for much longer, oh boy, you'd _better_ believe it. Not for much fucking longer.

Flagg guns the engine and gives the Cruz-thing a playful nudge, causing a minor hurricane of flies to rise up irritably before settling back to their meal. He puts on a slick pair of aviator sunglasses and the Crown Vic tears off down the street. 

Maurice Boscorelli watches after him, and he is content, serene, at peace for the first time in days.

  
  


***

  
  


Bosco woke up grinning. 

  
  


***

  
  


They called it Project Blue and it came out of California. Containment failed, and some sniveling little shit of a military cop named Campion managed to escape the base with his wife and kid. He made it halfway across the country before dying in some shitspot Texas town called Arnette, the first low flames of the epidemic already smoldering nicely behind him. 

Bosco knew all of this and took it as fact. Flagg had told him.

Now, late in the evening of June 27, Bosco was on the move. New York was long behind him. A hot summer wind bit into his face and howled in his ears. He responded by edging the bike up towards ninety. He wore no helmet, no protection but a leather jacket and a pair of wraparound sunglasses. He knew there were stalled vehicles, abandoned army roadblocks, any number of hazards, and if he hit something like that at this speed, he'd leave pieces of himself pasted along the asphalt for half a dozen miles.

But he wasn't worried. He wasn't bad with a bike, and this screaming little Yamaha crotch-rocket (he'd found it in the showroom of a bike shop that had miraculously escaped both looting and arson) was a damned fine one. Bikes were your best bet now if you wanted to travel; a bigger vehicle would only get you into trouble. 

And trouble wasn't something he had time for. He had business in Nevada, and he had no doubt at all of what he would find there. He knew now that there were indeed other survivors, and he knew that not all of them would be heading his way. Some would be going to the _other_. Oh, he knew all about the _other_. He'd seen her, after all; the old woman with the guitar. Bosco knew she was real and didn't question it, just as he no longer questioned how the dreams beckoning him to Nevada could be real. They were real. He knew it.

Just as he knew he would be kept safe. The late evening sun shone down on the highway ahead, golden and beautiful. The wind was liberating and clean and sweet-smelling, the speed almost soothing, and every now and then he would pass a crow sitting on a fencepost, or a stalled car, or just on the shoulder of the road. Just a glimpse and then he would be past it, but he knew he was being watched. Being watched ... and watched after.

Bosco took the bike up to a hundred-and-ten, grinning into the wind, knowing he was in good hands. 

* * *

Yep, he's heading for Flagg. But will he stay there? I don't even know myself yet ... ;)


	8. Epilogue August

Well, this is it - after a fairly long delay, the story's finally finished. Once again, thanks for the reviews, support, encouragement - there's a Special Thanks at the end of this chapter, but you know who you are :)

I've also taken Cosmic Castaway's advice and set things up so anonymous reviews will be accepted. I kind of neglected changing any account settings before now, so I didn't even realize that was an option. Oh well. 

Here we go with the Chapter summary, short and to the point: There's no turning back now ...

* * *

Here by my side, an angel

Here by my side, the devil

Never turn your back on me

Never turn your back on me again

Here by my side, it's Heaven

  
  


Here by my side, you are destruction

Here by my side, a new color to paint the world

Never turn your back on it

Never turn your back on it again

Here by my side, it's Heaven

  
  


- Matthew Good

  
  
  
  


******Epilogue**

August

Maurice Boscorelli sat in the shade by himself next to an old supply shed, thoughts languid and drifting as he chewed listlessly on his egg-salad sandwich. 

He hated lunch breaks. He ate, but more out of a need to occupy his fidgeting hands than out of any real appetite. He had made plenty of friends in Las Vegas, quite a few of them right here at the Indian Springs airbase. Hank Rawson, Carl Hough, Stan Bailey ... they were all good guys, true enough, but during the working day Bosco preferred to be left alone. To put it simply, he lived only to work, and he found himself tireless. Always buzzing, always keyed up, no patience for distraction. In many ways, this inexplicable, bottomless energy almost scared him. 

He worked three jobs. On Saturdays he taught hand-to-hand combat from eight in the morning to five in the afternoon. On Sundays he taught firearms at a Vegas PD firing range. Mostly handguns, but he threw in some of what he'd learned from Glen Hobart about long guns. If there was one unspoken motto in Vegas, it was Waste Nothing. 

During the rest of the week he boarded a Las Vegas High School bus at seven in the morning and came out here to Indian Springs (or "The Springs" as everyone called it) where he was part of a general-duties maintenance crew. Last week, they'd finally completed the task of attaching and arming the Shrike missiles to the wings of the Skyhawk fighter planes. Everything was go as far as the technology was concerned, so all that remained was to get the pilots trained and checked out. 

He'd never been much for any of that touchy-feely "self-discovery" shit, but now Bosco found himself in a more reflective state of mind, trying to examine just how far he'd come since New York. And like his newly discovered energy and enthusiasm, what he saw there sometimes frightened him. 

He had witnessed one crucifixion since he'd arrived in Vegas almost two months ago - a guy named Hec Drogan. Ol' Hec had been freebasing, and that was too bad, because Flagg didn't tolerate drugs here. Not _at all_. So ol' Hec had ended up riding a cross. Bosco had watched it, and it hadn't affected him at all. He'd thought it would do _something_ to him, perhaps introduce a certain level of doubt, but it hadn't. This was the way things were now, and - just _maybe_ - the way things always should have been. No quarter was given. No punches were pulled. 

Maritza Cruz would have been impressed. 

The dreams had followed him all through his journey across the country. Sometimes it would be the New York street again, the car, Cruz dead and flyblown in the passenger seat, Flagg in his denim and sprung boots. But mostly the dreams were dark and obscure and ominous, exciting and yet at the same time deeply frightening. There had always been that sense of _slippage_, of plunging headlong into a new life, a new _age_. One in which there would be no turning back. 

Sometimes, however, he would wake up in the darkness in whatever motel or roadside inn he was sleeping in, and Faith would be there, standing over him. Visible in spite of the pitch blackness of a world where electricity was already just a memory. In these waking dreams, she never spoke. She would only look down at him, sometimes slowly shaking her head. Or she would simply turn her back on him ... and then she would be gone. 

Well, that was only lingering guilt, wasn't it? Simple guilt. He'd made a promise to her, one he'd almost immediately broken. But what was there to be guilty about? Why, nothing! He'd made the promise only to offer some pitiful comfort to her before she died - it wasn't as if he'd _meant it_! And he didn't believe for a second that Faith was _haunting_ him, any more than he believed that she was sitting on a cloud somewhere with Fred and Charlie and Emily. That just wasn't the real world, brothers and sisters - that kind of thing was a fairy-story for the weak-minded. Faith was _gone_. 

_You dreamed of Flagg. And _he's_ real. _

He paused in mid-bite and frowned thoughtfully.

_No ... No, totally different. _Totally.

Yes, it _was_ different, because unlike Faith, Flagg was _alive_.

But he still hadn't met Flagg in person, and that bothered him. While Bosco was happy doing his part, he still wanted to be _noticed_. He sure as hell wasn't going to be a firearms instructor or a grunt on a maintenance crew forever. Of course, he realized that Flagg was probably a very busy man - the power was on here, the streets had been cleaned up, the corpses had been removed and disposed of. That had been one hell of an undertaking, and it was still ongoing. 

But Bosco knew he still had to get _in_ somehow, someday. He had to at least _thank_ the guy, thank Flagg for his inspiration, for giving him a sense of direction when everything and everyone around him was dying. If not for Flagg, Bosco realized he probably would have eaten his own gun. 

"Hey, Boscorelli! You antisocial or somethin'?"

Bosco looked up, startled out of his thoughts. Carl Hough was coming towards him, carrying a thermos of coffee and two tin cups. Carl had been a commercial pilot before the plague, and was one of the guys currently training to fly the Skyhawk jets. He was also an ex-Marine, your typical gruff n' tough type, and Bosco supposed that out of everyone here at the Springs, Carl qualified as his closest friend. They'd get together for an occasional beer, and they'd have a great ol' time grousing about the way the world was, about how things were better now, about how the old world had gotten exactly what it deserved. 

It was just a damned shame, Bosco thought, that it had to come at the cost of so many good people. 

Carl sat down next to him, handed him one of the cups, and poured him a generous helping of black coffee. Bosco took it with a grunt of thanks, but inwardly he winced. He liked Carl, but true to his new habits, he wanted to be alone right now, wanted the break to be over, wanted to get back to work.

"So, you enjoying the climate?" Carl asked jovially. "Or are you getting ready to run screaming back to New York yet?"

Bosco offered a sardonic smile. Born, raised and firmly entrenched in New York most of his life, the dry desert heat had hit him pretty hard when he'd first arrived. And while he'd lived through plenty of hot New York summers, there was something different about Nevada-brand heat. Something _inescapable_. 

"I'm still pickin' the seat o' my drawers out of the crack o' my ass every ten seconds, if that's what you mean."

Carl laughed. He sipped at his coffee, winced at either the temperature or the taste, and gestured towards one of the hangars with his cup. "Way to go with the Skyhawks. I hear you and the crew got those bad boys all locked and loaded. Great job, man."

Bosco shrugged. "Yeah, well, we had ourselves a special helper. He did most of the work."

Carl looked at him, smiled mirthlessly, and mimed flicking a lighter. "You mean ..."

"Yeah, _that_ guy," Bosco chuckled. "He's a firebug, all right. But he helped us get those missiles on those planes in six hours. _Six hours_. Before he showed up we didn't know what the hell we were doing, and we were thinking it was gonna take _days_. I'm tellin' you, that guy _must_ have been in the Air Force."

Carl laughed sourly. "Guy like that? You gotta be kidding." He looked up at the sound of an approaching engine. "Well, lookie lookie. Speak of the devil, and he shall appear. The desert wanderer returns."

Bosco followed Carl's gaze and saw a dusty gray Land Rover advancing across the airfield, pulling a box trailer behind it. It was moving at a good clip, and Bosco saw one of the guys from his crew skitter out of the way to avoid being hit. 

Carl turned to Bosco. "Wanna go see if what kind of shiny new toys Santa's brought us?"

Bosco hastily gobbled the last three bites of his sandwich and got to his feet. "Okay. No problem."

Carl shook his head, watching the Rover. "That guy gives me the creeps, personally. I'm not ashamed to admit that to another man. The spooky fuck _scares_ me, if you want to know the truth."

Bosco nodded absently and started over to meet the Rover, and now he could see the vague shape of the driver behind the grimy windshield. The guy was bouncing happily in his seat, as if bopping to a particularly catchy tune, and as the Land Rover approached, Bosco could hear him as well. 

"Bumpty-bumpty-_bump!"_ the Land Rover's driver was yelling exuberantly out the window. "Bumpty-bumpty-_bump!_ Ci-bo-la, Ci-bo-la, bumpty-bumpty-_bump! Bumpty-bumpty-bump!_"

With every _bump!_, the vehicle lurched slightly. Bosco waved him down, giving the vehicle a wide berth until it came to a jerky stop. The driver kept singing that lively, tuneless little ditty, and when he got out of the Land Rover he did a funny little hop-skipping jig. 

He was tall and lanky, his clothes frayed and shabby after a week of roughing it in the Nevada desert. One exposed arm was a pinkish, gleaming mass of healing burn tissue. Hanging around his neck by a chain was a small, dark stone, smooth and unbroken jet-black but for a small red flaw in the center, a flaw which looked vaguely like an eye. 

This, Bosco knew, was Flagg's highest badge of rank. 

He was known to everyone simply as the Trashcan Man; Trashy or Trash for short. Bosco had first met him a week before, when Trash had been brought out to the Springs to help the crew get the Shrike missiles mounted on the planes. Though in many ways he seemed to be simple-minded, Trash had a peculiar gift for weapons. He would periodically disappear for days into the desert in his Land Rover, and when he returned he would usually be hauling a load of weapons. Guns, landmines, chemicals, anything you could think of. 

Bosco knew that the stuff came from the military installations that were out there in the big empty between California and Nevada, but how Trash managed to actually _find_ all that stuff was a mystery to him. Not that he wasted much time caring. Trash had obviously been a loser before the plague, but now he was in his element, and mostly everyone was glad for him. In many ways he was like a big kid, and everybody went out of their way to be kind to him. 

"What'd ya bring us, Trashy?" Bosco said amiably.

Trashcan turned, his watery, not-quite-sane eyes falling on Bosco. For a moment there was no recognition ... and then his face lit up. "Bosco! How're you?"

"Good, Trash, real good," Bosco said, his earlier standoffishness suddenly gone, replaced with the same kind of big-brotherly good cheer he'd always reserved for Charlie Yokas. 

"Hey Trash," he said, leaning in and whispering conspiratorially, "I saw your flametracks."

Trash brightened immediately. He had brought the flametracks back from an earlier expedition; they were tanks full of napalm. Trash absolutely _adored_ them, arranging and re-arranging them, _playing_ with them, the way a kid plays with Hot Wheels. And whenever anyone mentioned them, Trash seemed to swell to twice his normal size.

"Yeah?" Trashy said, a big, sloppy grin spreading on his face. 

Bosco grinned back. "Yeah. Pretty fuckin' cool, my man. Especially the way you got 'em all lined 'em all up like that. Very neat."

"They _are_ neat, aren't they?" Trash said dreamily. 

"Damn straight. Now I'll tell you what, Trashy - we can't stand here shooting the shit all day, because time's a wastin'. And Mr. Flagg doesn't like people wasting time. And I mean, Flagg's _the man_, right?"

"My life for him," Trashy muttered distantly, obviously still thinking of his flametracks.

Bosco smiled uneasily. Trash was a bit simple, yes, and a bit weird, but he was also ... well, he was also kind of _spooky_. 

"Yeah, sure. What say you give me a sneak peak at what you've brought back?"

Trashcan brightened again, and led Bosco around to the back of the Rover's trailer. There were eight narrow crates tucked neatly into the bay in piles of four. The tops had already been pried off; Bosco guessed that had been done by an eager Trashcan Man. He lifted the lid on the nearest crate. 

The sweet, warm tang of gun oil drifted up into his face.

"Holy _Christ_, Trash," Bosco breathed. 

Trash looked at him warily. "Did I ... did I do something wrong?"

Bosco smiled hastily. "No! No, Trash, this ... this is _great!_"

The crate was filled with heavy sniper rifles. Barrett A2's, if Bosco knew his weapons. They looked somewhat like bloated, oversized M-16s. He thought he might have heard Glen Hobart talking about these babies at one time - they could shoot through concrete walls, and were sometimes referred to as "anti-tank rifles."

Bosco hefted one of the guns out of the crate, feeling the righteous, deadly power in its weight and coldness. He yanked the bolt back almost viciously, and felt a thrill up his spine as it snapped closed with a loud, crisp _CLACK_.

He turned and beamed at Trash. "This is some serious fuckin' hardware, Trashy."

The Trashcan Man's chest puffed out again with that same giddy pride. "There's some other stuff in the other crates," he said, pointing. "Submachine guns in these here. Assault shotguns in those ones back there. Also some frag grenades, I think."

Bosco nodded, replacing the Barrett in its crate. 

Then Trash looked past him and suddenly started waving frantically. "Hey, look! It's Lloyd!"

Bosco turned and caught sight of a big navy-blue Cadillac heading towards them, looking absurd and out-of-place on the airfield compared to Trashy's battered Rover. It was big, swanky, stopping just short of being a full-fledged limo. 

It pulled up nearby, and Bosco recognized the driver as Barry Dorgan, head of Vegas security. He didn't know the two who were riding in the back, but the guy in the front passenger seat was Lloyd Henreid, Flagg's right-hand-man and the only person in Vegas besides Trashy to wear the black stone with the red flaw. 

Bosco felt his stomach lurch with a mix of disgust and sour jealously. Henreid had been nothing but a jagoff murdering coward before the plague - Bosco knew that because he could remember seeing something about it on the news just before the shit had hit the fan back in June. It had been a tri-state murder spree. Robbery. Drugs. The whole works. Why Flagg would choose someone like that as his Second was a source of both wonder and some very unsettling doubt, which was why Bosco didn't allow himself to think about it very often. Why would someone like Henreid even be _called_ to Flagg in the first place? For Christ's sake, people like Lloyd Henreid were part of the _problem_ that Flagg was trying to solve!

_Is he?_ some clouded part of him asked. _Is he really?_

The voice, he realized with no surprise, sounded like Faith Yokas. It was laced with bitter disgust. 

Bosco pushed it away and forced himself to be polite; it would be smart stay on Henreid's good side, no matter how big a prick he might be.

And on the heels of that, something occurred to him:_ this could be his chance_. Standing in front of him was Flagg's _second-in-command_. 

If Bosco made only one friend in Vegas, it occurred to him that it really ought to be this jagoff.

"Well, is this just luck, or what?" Henreid said cheerily. He beamed at Trash and gave Bosco only a cursory once-over glance. "You just get back, Trashy?"

Trashcan nodded vigorously. 

"Bring us a good haul?"

"You bet!"

Henreid had a quick look at the guns and whistled, impressed. "You know where to take this stuff, Trash?"

Trashcan Man nodded again. "Yeah. Quartermaster."

"Right-on! You take this iron over there, then take a break. You've earned it. Come by the Grand later tonight, if you want."

"Sure thing!" Trash said, and just like that, it was over. The Trashcan Man started back for his Rover. Henreid and his friends turned back to their Caddy. 

Bosco was left standing alone, forgotten. 

_What the hell am I?_ He thought angrily. _A ghost?_

No way. No fucking way. This was his _chance_.

He gritted his teeth and started off after Henreid, feeling miserably like some brown-nosing toady. "Mr. Henreid! Hey! Could I talk to you a minute?"

Henreid turned impatiently. "What?"

Bosco stuck out a hand. "I'm ... my name's Maurice Boscorelli. Originally from New York. Used to be NYPD."

Henreid smiled thinly. "Yeah?"

"I was ... well, I was wondering if I could ... if I could see _him_. Mr. Flagg."

For a brief moment Henreid and his men looked shocked, and Bosco noticed how all four of them bristled at the name. One of them even made the sign of the cross. 

But the moment passed, and Henreid chuckled derisively. "Oh, you do, do you? You want to see Mr. Flagg?"

Bosco's face darkened. "Yeah, I do. Somethin' about that _funny_ to you?"

_Be careful, _he cautioned himself, his eyes drawn to that black stone around Henreid's neck, the red flaw that looked like an eye._ Stay calm, and don't be an idiot. Shit, I almost called him a jagoff, right to his face. Watch it._

Henreid shrugged and waved an apology. "Sorry. It's just that he's a hard guy to keep track of, and he sure doesn't answer to me. He comes and goes, you know? And I mean, we still got people comin' into Vegas every day by the hundreds. We're all pretty busy."

Bosco swallowed hard and struggled to keep his voice steady. "Look, man ... Flagg ... You know, Flagg's the reason I'm still _alive_. I lost _everything_, I watched everybody I cared about _die_." Bosco shrugged. "I know, I know - _who didn't_, right? But I ... Flagg was all I had. Those dreams, they gave me _hope_, you know? They made me think that there might be a reason to go on breathin'. This kind of shit isn't easy for me ... but you have to understand that Flagg _saved_ me. You know?"

And through this little speech Bosco saw Henreid's expression changing, and he knew he was _in._ This was _it._

Henreid fingered the stone around his neck thoughtfully. "Yeah ..." he whispered after a moment, voice hoarse. "Yeah, man, I know just how it is." Then he seemed to straighten, his voice once again cool and businesslike. "Okay Boscorelli, we've got room for one more in the car. Hop in and help yourself to whatever you want from the mini-bar. I've got some stuff to take care of out here, but I'll be done in an hour. Two, tops. Then we'll take you back to the Grand and I'll see what I can do to get you in to see him."

Bosco's head reeled, and he resisted the giddy urge to thrust a triumphant fist into the air. "Thanks!" he said, aware he sounded like an asshole and not caring one little bit. "Thanks, man, thanks so much!"

_And watch your back, Henreid_, a colder part of him said, the part that always sounded like Cruz. _Because someday, my friend, _I'll_ be the one wearing that stone._

  
  


***

  
  


Bosco was introduced to Ronnie Sykes and Ace High, two of Lloyd's cronies and, in Bosco's estimation, just another pair of jagoffs. Nevertheless, he joked and laughed and drank with them in the back of the Caddy as they headed for the MGM Grand Hotel, Flagg's adopted headquarters.

But there was a certain level of tension in the air, and it was nothing to do with him, the newcomer in their midst. He remembered the way they'd all stiffened when he mentioned Flagg, the way Ronnie had crossed himself like a superstitious old fishwife. In fact, the more Bosco thought about it, the more he realized people rarely referred to Flagg by his proper name.

Well, it was no biggie, really. Flagg wanted an air of mystique around him, and Bosco knew the value of a good spook-story. In the neighborhoods where he'd worked Anti-Crime, Maritza Cruz' name had been well known and well feared. They used to call her Two-Bags because of the drugs she carried with her, ready to plant on any uncooperative suspect, and they all knew she _never_ bluffed. And Bosco remembered one guy in particular who had called her the Cruz-Missile, apparently in reference to that eerie way she had of just randomly showing up out of nowhere and wreaking merciless havoc on the dealers and junkies.

He supposed it was much the same here with Flagg. People called him the dark man, the tall man, the Walkin' Dude, the hardcase. A few others. And as it had been with Cruz, these names were always applied to Flagg with a healthy mix of respect and fear. 

Of course, no-one had ever claimed that Sergeant Cruz was a shape-changer. Or that she had power over the crows, the wolves, the rats, the weasels. And no-one ever claimed that Cruz had once driven a man insane just by _looking_ at him. Those were all things that Bosco had heard in connection with Flagg at one point or another. Not that he believed any of it.

_Just a little superstition working its way into the mix, _he thought._ Brought on by the fact that only a few months ago we all witnessed an honest-to-God Apocalypse. Some people want to read something biblical into this. Some people want to believe that Flagg is some kind of ... messiah, maybe. Well, let 'em. Hell, in a way, maybe he is. _

_But as for frying someone's brains just by looking at him ... that was strictly window-dressing._

The anxiety seemed to thicken palpably as they crossed the empty casino, Lloyd Henreid bringing up the front, Bosco trailing along at the rear behind Barry Dorgan. No-one spoke. He glanced around at the dead slots, the unattended card tables, the abandoned roulette wheels. Since the power had been brought back online, people sometimes went to the casinos on their off-hours to play a round of poker or maybe try their luck at the wheel. Just for fun.

A week after he'd arrived in Vegas, Bosco had won three thousand dollars playing the slots at the Golden Nugget. He'd laughed until he cried; only _now_, when money was better put to use as_ toilet paper_, could he strike it that lucky. He'd never believed in gambling. Faith had, he remembered, and he remembered how he'd always gone out of his way to foil any attempt she made at buying lottery tickets. 

Melancholy stole over him again.

_Shit_, he thought, and smiled with a grim mix of wistful nostalgia, guilt and grief. _I should have let her live it up a little. _

And suddenly a gruesome, disturbingly vivid fantasy wrote itself into being before he could do anything to stop it. 

He saw all of his friends. All of his _dead_ friends. Here, seated at a card table: Carlos Nieto, Doc Parker, Alex Taylor, and his own _mother_. All four bloated and gray with superflu. There, at the craps table: Kim Zambrano, Jimmy Doherty, Ty Davis and John Sullivan. The left side of Jimmy's head was a raw and gaping hole. Kim's lower jaw had been mostly shot away, and like Ty and Sully beside her, her jacket was tattered and bloody and full of ragged, high-caliber holes.

And Maritza Cruz was grinning at him over the roulette table, her eyes nothing but empty sockets squirming with maggots. 

_Where's Faith?_ he thought muddily, feeling his stomach turn over, his egg-salad threatening to come up on him. _She's not with them. Of course not - she only comes at night. She always looks perfectly fine when she does, but it's worse when she comes at night. All she does is shake her head and then she disappears. But it's _worse_._

"Muh," he murmured, forcing his gorge down, closing his eyes to shut out the vision. "Muh. Fuck."

Barry Dorgan looked back at him cautiously. "You okay?"

Bosco waved a hand. "No problem."

Henreid suddenly stopped the procession. He turned to them, and Bosco saw he was jittery, nervous, maybe even a bit afraid. "Wait here and grab a seat. I'm gonna go on ahead and see if he's available."

Bosco and the others sat down around a nearby card table (thankfully, it was not the one where he'd seen Alex and Carlos and Doc). Someone's old game - maybe even one from before the plague - was still spread across the surface. There appeared to be a few thousand dollars worth of chips, some still stacked in neat little piles.

"Hey, Barry!" Ronnie Sykes cried cheerily. "Look! You're on a winnin' streak!"

Dorgan looked down; whoever had been sitting in his chair last had been up about one grand. He grunted a short, terse laugh.

But Bosco could still hear the anxiety in both of them. Ronnie's good cheer sounded breathless and forced, and Dorgan was sweating like a pig. What was it about Flagg that wound people's panties into such a bunch? 

Just what _was_ it he was gonna meet in that office today?

Across from him, Dorgan lit a cigarette with one shaky hand and pursed his lips thoughtfully. "So ... you were NYPD, huh?"

Bosco nodded, glad for a break in the silence. "Yeah. Nine years."

"Mmm. I was a cop, myself. Santa Monica PD, Detective second. Ten years. What were you?"

"Um ... what?"

"What _rank_?"

"Oh ... uh ... patrol officer, mainly. Last six months or so before ... before the plague I was working Anti-Crime. Elite plainclothes unit. Worked the worst neighborhoods in the city. Meth dealers, bikers, drive-bys, wall-to-wall junkies. Christ, you name it."

"You seen a lot of bad shit," Dorgan said, and being a cop himself, of course it wasn't a question.

Bosco smiled, distant and bitter. "Goddam right."

Dorgan nodded. "Things are gonna be better. Starting _now_. With _him_ running the show."

"Yeah," Bosco said, thinking of ol' freebasing Hec Drogan, riding his cross somewhere out along a Nevada highway. And he thought to himself, _You know who'd look good on a cross? Dougie Francis. Or maybe that biker, the meth dealer, the one who was selling to Cruz' sister. Animal. Too bad we couldn't nail _him _up there._

Bosco smiled.

Three minutes later Henreid came back and motioned to Bosco. 

"Okay, Boscorelli. Follow me."

  
  


***

  
  


Bosco walked into Flagg's office feeling very small and almost ... unworthy. He shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, and he realized dismally that he had to take a nice, long piss. It was back to childhood, back to school, back to the principal's office. Back to _coming home_ from school, of waiting to see which of his two moods his father would be in - would he be pissed off, or _drunk_ and pissed off? Ah, always a point of curiosity. And what kind of interesting new colors would have appeared on his Ma's cheeks and jaw and forehead while he'd been at school? 

Hey, maybe none at all! Maybe today would be the day that ol' Pa forgot to pull the punch at the right time. Maybe Ma was dead. 

And what could little Maurice do about any of it? Why, nothing! Not one god-damned thing! Not unless he wanted a broken arm or crushed cheekbone or a few cracked ribs or even a fractured skull! Not one god-damned thing!

_Christ_, Bosco thought shakily as he walked into the dimly lit office._ Where did all _that_ just come from?_

The office was devoid of any decoration or furniture. There was no desk, no chairs, no paintings on the walls. There was a large picture window, but the only view it presented was the baked, featureless empty of the Nevada desert. 

And sitting cross-legged in the center of the bare floor, head bowed in meditation, was the man Bosco had once met as Officer Richard Farrell of the 55th Precinct, Third Watch. The man who now called himself Randall Flagg ... and yet was also known by many as the tall man, the Walkin' Dude, the hardcase ... 

... the _dark_ man.

He lifted his head and stood just as Bosco's eyes found him, almost as if he'd timed it for dramatic effect. And for one brief instant Bosco thought that he really _was_ coming home to his father, that it was not Flagg over there at all but dear ol' dad, tall and dark and only half-remembered, a brutish sub-man utterly devoid of any personality, any purpose except to maim and hurt and humiliate. 

But he was Flagg. Only Flagg. The costume was the same; dusty, folksy-looking old cowboy boots, jeans, a simple open-throated shirt and a jeans-jacket with a button on each lapel; the yellow smiley-face on the left; _How's Your Pork?_ on the right. 

Flagg grinned warmly, and Bosco, though anxious, returned it without thinking. 

"Bosco, Bosco, Bosco," Flagg said, shaking his head ruefully. "It's been a long, long time, son, and I really should have tried to keep in touch. _My bad_, as the kids say." -Flagg winked- "Or _used_ to say, eh? Now, what _can_ I do for ya?"

Bosco floundered, and with dawning horror realized he'd put no thought whatsoever into what he wanted to say. He was here, in the place he'd so desperately wanted to be since he'd arrived, here in the presence of this great man, this leader he respected and admired so much, and _he_ _didn't know what to say_.

_Idiot! Idiot! You stupid fucking jagoff idiot!_

"Uh ... uh, well, I thought we could ... you know, have a talk ..."

_Idiot! IDIOT!!!_

Flagg chuckled. "That's not very specific, son. I mean, we could talk about _anything_ on this fine afternoon. We could talk about the Tower. The Beams. The Guardians of the Portals."

Bosco frowned, suddenly morbidly sure that Flagg was making fun of him. "What?"

Flagg waved dismissively. "Never mind. Take your time, Bosco. Think it through."

Bosco swallowed, and now there was a new thought, a new question; _was_ this the same man he'd met five years ago, in New York? That cop who'd pried that kid's hands off the fire escape and let him drop? 

Yes ... yes, it was. 

But was Flagg the same man from the dreams ...? 

He _seemed _to be, but ...

For the first time it struck Bosco how utterly silly it had been to believe that a conversation he'd had with someone in a _dream_ could be somehow connected to the real world. He'd crossed the country based on the idea that this man had _spoken_ to him, called to him telepathically, and how ridiculous was that? This was_ real life_, not a fucking _X-Files_ episode. Jesus, he should know better! Sure, he'd met Flagg a few years ago, and now here he was, leading one of two new post-plague communities. But that had nothing to do with the dreams. 

It was coincidence. Nothing more.

"Uh ... forget it," Bosco mumbled, turning and heading for the door. "Sorry to waste your time."

"Not a problem," Flagg said mildly. "See ya 'round." 

Tears stinging the corners of his eyes, a low, black hopelessness settled over him as he reached for the doorknob. Back he went, back to the Springs and the jets, back to being just another faceless gear in Flagg's machine.

"You still think about them, Bosco?" Flagg called casually from behind him.

Bosco's hand froze halfway to the doorknob and he turned. Flagg was studying him carefully, a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. 

"You know who I mean," the dark man continued. "Doc ... Carlos ... Kim ... Alex ... Ty ... Sully ... Faith Yokas ..." The dark man grinned, and he uttered the final name with a spicy Spanish flair. "_Maritza Cruz?_"

Bosco's heart sped up, head growing light and legs growing numb as Flagg rattled off the names of all his dead friends and colleagues. 

Flagg's eyes, mirthful and sparkling with that secret glee, sent the clear, unspoken message: _Yes, that's right: I _know_. I know all about them._

"No," Bosco said hoarsely. "No, I don't."

_That's a lie. And _what_ a lie. You just sat there in the casino and imagined you saw them all, _watching_ you with their dead eyes, not more than five minutes ago. Ghosts. The walking dead._

Flagg clucked his tongue reproachfully. "I think you do." He moved towards Bosco, who took an involuntary step away. "I'm guessing you _do_ still think about them, Bosco, and you always will, because you have good reason to. That shitty truth will always be with you, won't it?"

Bosco was trembling visibly now. "What truth?"

Flagg shrugged. "That their deaths were unnecessary. Unjustified. Totally senseless. And you know that no-one is ever, _ever_ gonna be brought to justice for any of them. Isn't that right?"

Bosco felt the hot, sick rage flow over his fear, drowning it instantly.

"And there are so many people who have to pay, aren't there?" Flagg continued before he could speak. "So many people have gotten off easy. You remember Vernon Marks, Bosco?"

"Hell, yeah. He put the hit out on Miguel White."

"Right. On a _twelve-year-old kid_. Just because Miguel was a threat to his shitty little street empire." Flagg shook his head. "You won't want to hear this, Bosco, but I have to tell you: Vernon Marks was immune to the superflu. Just like you."

"_What?_" he spat, glancing around reflexively, half-expecting to see Marks here in the room with them.

Flagg chuckled. "Oh, he's not around _here_ anywhere, you can believe me on that. You know where he ended up?"

Bosco thought a moment. "Colorado?" he asked timidly.

"One hundred percent _keee-rect_, Bosco. Marks ended up in Boulder, Colorado. With the old woman. Abagail Freemantle." Flagg's voice became high, bitter and mocking. "'Folks 'round here call me Mother Abagail. I'm a hundred-and-eight years old, and I still bake my own bread!' You know who I mean?"

"I saw her," Bosco said distantly. 

_- He can't offer you nothin', Maurice Louis Boscorelli! His promises are hollow! He's the father of lies! - _

Flagg nodded. "I bet you did. And I bet you saw through her shit, right?"

Bosco snorted. "_Damn_ right."

"Marks was drawn there," Flagg said. "They call themselves the 'Boulder Free-Zone' and you know what that means? _Anything goes_. The people who go there, people like Marks, they think that now the whole world's their playground, they can just kick back and let everything hang out. Understand?"

Bosco found he didn't ... but he was starting to. "Uh ..."

"What I'm talking about is _respect_, son. Not just _justice_, but _respect_. Respect for the _rules_. The old world died because nobody had any respect for anything, any _boundaries_. Bad shit happened, but that wasn't the worst of it. The worst of it was, people were willing to _let_ it happen. You of all people should remember how it was, because you were a cop. How many times did you bring in some jagoff with a few extra bumps and bruises and have the bleeding-hearts down on your ass for police brutality?"

Bosco laughed sourly. "Just about every damned day."

"Mmm-hmm. People had their priorities all wrong. You remember a writer named Aaron Noble?"

Bosco thought a moment and nodded. "Yeah. He wrote _Blue Line_, didn't he? That one that made the whole NYPD look like a zoo."

Flagg clapped him on the shoulder. "Right on! And if the superflu hadn't happened when it did, I have a feeling you would have run across Noble, or at least someone like him. People like Noble were bloodclots looking for a place to happen, looking to ruin the lives of good men and women while defending the 'rights' of failures and junkies and street trash."

"Fucking right!" Bosco snarled, feeling his temples throbbing, feeling the veins pulsing thickly in his neck. The feeling was old, familiar, so beautifully natural and easy to slip back into. So easy to slip back into like ... like ...

_Like an old pair of comfortably sprung cowboy boots_, he thought with a faint smile.

"It was that attitude that created the superflu in the first place," Flagg said. "That attitude was why it got loose. It was that attitude that created the likes of Animal and Vernon Marks, people who fed on the misery of others. And what can one man do against all of that? What could _you_ ever do? You went out there and you did your best, but you were just one man, Bosco. And deep down, you always knew you didn't do enough, could _never_ do enough. You were helpless to stop it all."

_- you have to grow up, Bos ... you have to let the past go ... you're still ... still so much that little boy ... so powerless ... helpless -_

Flagg was grinning again. "A ten-year-old boy sees Pa beating on his Ma every day, every night. What can the kid do about it? He wouldn't even make one hundred pounds soaking wet, as they say. He can't do a fucking thing. So he grows up and he gets strong and he puts on a badge and he tries to make up for it that way. But he never really can make up for it, can he? It's too late, and he's just one guy. At the end of the day, cops tell themselves that they made a difference ... but that's really a lot of shit, isn't it?"

"Right," Bosco rasped miserably. 

"But what I'm saying to you, Maurice, is that you are _actually_ in a position now to _make that difference_. The people responsible for the superflu are dead, and the people responsible for the deaths of Kim and Sully and Ty are dead, and your _Pa_ is dead. But their _breed_ is still out there. Over in the Free-Zone with the old witch." 

Flagg's eyes narrowed dreamily. "But we're gonna wipe 'em out, Bosco. One last big fucking enema right up the ass of the old order. I have my own reasons, but you'll be doing it for Faith and Ty and Sully and Kim and Cruz and all that they stood for. I know you want to be a part of that."

Bosco clenched his teeth. "Absolutely."

Flagg's eyes focused on him again, and Bosco noticed uncomfortably how black they were, black and shiny, almost no whites at all. "You forgot something back in New York, Bosco. You forgot it ... but fortunately, I happened to find it for you."

Flagg reached into his jacket and withdrew a small rectangular object, something black and gold and glittering, something that was attached to a fine silver chain. 

Bosco could not stifle an almost theatrical gasp of shock. 

It was his Anti-Crime badge. Not just a clever reproduction, either; it was _his badge_. The number was the same, and a small scuff-mark in the upper left-hand corner removed any further doubt. 

"Wha ... How did you - ?"

Flagg merely grinned and offered the badge. 

And after a moment Bosco reached for it, aware of the blood rushing hot and thick in his ears, aware that he was once again hearing the voices of ghosts.

_Don't, Bos_, Faith seemed to say. _This is it, your last chance. You take that badge and all bets are off. You'll be _his_. This isn't like it was with Cruz. You could have broken away from her if you'd tried, but this is different. This is _for keeps, _because this thing in front of you isn't really a man. On some level, I think you know that. Turn away, Bos. Turn away _now.

But Bosco was already touching the badge even as this passed through his mind, running a finger over the cool metal, slipping the slender chain around his hand. 

Then, abruptly, Flagg grabbed his hand in a painful, inhumanly strong grip, pinning the badge between their palms, and what happened next made Bosco cry out in mingled pain and terror.

He could feel the badge _changing shape_ against his palm, rearranging its structure and texture and size, becoming smaller, rounder, smoother ...

Then, just as suddenly, Flagg released him. Bosco drew his hand away as if scalded. He looked at the dark man, at that terrible grin, at the feral eyes, his heart thudding sickeningly in his chest. 

But even behind the fear, he realized there was a certain curious exhilaration. He wanted to see, he was _excited_ to see, yes, just like a kid on Christmas morning, because he knew what he would be looking at when he looked down ...

When he looked down and saw the small, oval shape resting in the center of his palm. The fine-linked chain was the same, but the Anti-Crime badge on the end of it was gone.

What sat in the center of his palm was a jet-black stone. 

There was, he saw with some disappointment, no red flaw in the center.

Flagg read this, either on his expression or in his mind, and said, "Don't knock it, Bosco. It puts you at the top. You put that stone on, and you take a few days to think about what you'd like to do next. Because I think you should be a bit higher on the food chain than a maintenance crew out at the Springs. Maybe you'd like to be a cop again. You could talk to Barry Dorgan ... I'm sure he could always use a reliable man to fill a position as ... say ... deputy chief."

Bosco felt a lazy, almost sappy smile spreading across his face. A cop again. Yes, he really could be a cop again, couldn't he? He could live with that. Easily.

Flagg nodded solemnly, decisively. Then, without another word, he turned away, crossing the office and once again settling into a semi-lotus position on the center of the floor, looking like some strange cowboy Buddha.

Bosco looked after him in mixed wonder, awe and dim terror, and started for the door again. He turned the jet stone over and over in his hand, feeling the dry, slithery way the little chain rubbed against the ball of his thumb. He looked at it for another moment or two, then hung it around his neck. The feeling of power was immediate and huge and sweetly exquisite.

The entire conversation had taken no more than about five minutes, and yet it had ended with him being blessed with a tremendous honor and responsibility. He felt the need for some last word of appreciation. Something lame like _thanks again_, probably, but what the hell? Given a million years he could never properly express what he was feeling right now, but he had to try. In his own meager way, he had to try.

He turned back to Flagg, and what he saw washed all of what he had been about to say away in an instant of pure, galvanized terror.

Flagg, still sitting cross-legged at the other end of the office, had begun to float.

_I'm not seeing that. That isn't happening. Or if it is, it's a trick. _

But it _was_ happening, and it _wasn't_ a trick, and as he watched he actually saw Flagg rise another few inches ... nine ... ten ... eleven ... a full foot now. 

"You picked the winning team, Bosco," the dark man said, sensing he was being watched though his eyes were closed. His grin had mellowed into small, serene smile. "Never forget that."

_Oh Jesus ... _

_... Jesus Christ, what have I just done?_

Bosco, trembling, turned and fled the room.

***

  
  


People come and go. Nothing lasts forever. You make friends and then you move on and make new. It happens. Sometimes you don't necessarily want it to, but it happens.

Maurice Boscorelli remembered thinking these things on a night that seemed a very long time ago, and at the time the thoughts had been idle, almost petulant. He'd been sitting in a car next to Sergeant Maritza Cruz, wondering about his future and not having the slightest idea what the coming week would bring. Funny, really. Sitting there stewing over Faith, being all _pissed_ at Faith, brooding over Cruz and wanting so badly to get in her pants again, Cruz sitting next to him, riddled with superflu and not even knowing it yet. Funny.

He didn't work at Indian Springs anymore; he was, as Flagg had suggested, Barry Dorgan's Deputy Chief. But he still came out to the desert regularly. It was the sky. He would stand with his head back, looking up into that endless blue Nevada sky that was almost frightening in its clarity. The clouds, clean-white and huge. He was perfectly capable of standing there for hours, unmindful of the sunburns darkening his cheeks and forehead, and think about old friends and broken promises. And how Fate was an artist. Fate painted you different colors through the experiences it brought you, shaped you, sculpted you. When this had first occurred to him, its uncharacteristic depth had pleased him. It still did.

Faith didn't come around his dreams as often as she used to, especially since he'd begun wearing the dark man's stone, and since he'd put the stone on his own fears and doubts had evaporated. At first he had done a lot of wondering, a lot of hard thinking. Of how _ordered_ things had seemed; that Faith had lived just long enough to deliver her final message, bidding him not to go to Flagg; that Faith always seemed so real, so ... _separate_ from his own thoughts when she appeared in his dreams. 

But there were other forces at work. For instance, after weeks of being a nobody, he had run into both the Trashcan Man and Lloyd Henreid in the space of only a few minutes, and within an hour had been talking to Flagg himself, and had received the dark man's favor. He kept seeing Flagg, floating a foot above the cool tile of the office floor, and he found himself immensely proud to be in that favor, immensely glad he was not one of Flagg's enemies over in the Free-Zone, immensely glad he had not listened to Faith. Poor, misguided Faith. She had been good-hearted, true, but in the end, she had never truly understood him. 

He was in the right place now; accepted, respected, full of power and purpose and promise. He'd tried to find that in so many places and in so many people over the years; Faith, Glen Hobart, Maritza Cruz, but now, finally, he had found it in Randall Flagg. He was, he realized, truly at peace for the first time in his life. 

Maurice Boscorelli had picked the winning team, and it was good to be alive.

  
  


END

* * *

  
  


**The Final Note - Many Thanks go out to ...**

  
  


... all who reviewed. Won't mention names, but like I said at the beginning, you of course know who you are :)

... The creators and cast of Third Watch, for bringing the characters to life.

... Stephen King, for writing the Stand and creating some of the most interesting characters ever, particularly the dark man himself, Randall Flagg.

... Nine Inch Nails, Tool, A Perfect Circle, Alice in Chains, Disturbed, Staind, Killing Joke, Marilyn Manson, Moby, The Orb, and Johnny Cash for his "Hurt" cover; the music that fueled and inspired me as I wrote.

Guess that's all, folks :) Might not be over yet - I cut a lot of stuff out, and I might do a final total revision of all chapters. 


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